


combat baby

by slutzilla



Category: Captive Prince - C. S. Pacat
Genre: Abandoned Work - Unfinished and Discontinued, M/M, POISON!!!, a horse named mouse specifically!, more horses!!!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-10
Updated: 2020-07-10
Packaged: 2021-03-04 20:13:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 61,252
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25192198
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/slutzilla/pseuds/slutzilla
Summary: a collection of events surrounding the courtship of laurent, son of aleron, prince of vere. part 2 ofa diadem, cantarella, and a chestnut filly.
Relationships: Auguste/OC, Damen/Laurent (Captive Prince), Jokaste/Kastor (Captive Prince), Laurent/Regent (Captive Prince), maybe see notes re: laurent/auguste too
Comments: 24
Kudos: 48





	combat baby

**Author's Note:**

> this story has been sitting 99% done on my desktop for WEEKS and so i think i'm just ready to publish it slightly unfinished and rough around the edges. people had such sweet responses to the first part and the vast bulk of this was written right after i posted that, and it felt like a waste to just leave this in a dusty corner! so i hope y'all enjoy. the whole narrative arc is there so no awful cliffhanger ending either
> 
> things to know:  
> — apparently jord is canonically short but not in my mind, bitch!! maybe he looks like young sean connery! not to force that image into your head but... think about it  
> — does laurent have like the most annoying french accent or what, please read all his dialogue in [this voice](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i6l6hbpc8NE) or don't read it at all.  
> — i was really torn on whether to tag this as auguste/laurent because it's _not_ , but also i felt like i needed to set the expectation that they are _very_ close in this story and it is 100% possible and okay if you, dear reader, interpret that closeness as romantic love, because this is a work of fiction and also i don't care what you do and potentially that was my intent kinda. but there is **no sexual relationship** between them. really i think laurent is in love with everyone who is nice to him: auguste, damen, jord, aimeric, every horse, probably the horsemaster (hello older man with infinite knowledge about his favorite subject) but that the connection he has with his brother is a tier above the one he'd have with anyone else, ever. so read it and weep i guess literally!
> 
> this was not revised, not copy edited, so it might be a mess! read w/ caution but also enjoy!

————— **AUGUSTE** —————  
TWENTY-FIVE.

**HE** took stock of himself, stumbling over a corpse. his helmet was humid with his own sweat, with mud and bile and blood. his nose had been broken somewhere along the line by the butt of a spear, and the swelling had begun to impair his vision. he'd pissed himself, all his fine motor skills were gone, he was rather certain he'd broken several ribs, a spear had grazed his calf so thoroughly that he could see muscle within the shreds of his leather breeches. the most pressing issue was his hand, however.

he held it in front of him like he was receiving a precious gift into his palm, using his other hand to pull his helmet off by the back collar. he couldn't see or think or breathe anymore with it on, and the threat was gone, even if he still shuddered at the clank of armor against wood, the sound of a sword being unsheathed from a dead man's skull, his nerves still frayed and charred, his body overwhelmed with adrenaline. and in his outstretched hand, he cradled a short achelon arrow. his palm had been skewered with it, and both ends protruded from either side. the entire shaft coated in the thick red paint of his blood.

"you've got to—" auguste breathed, too tired to find shame in the weakness of his voice, "get this out of me. now."

he couldn't walk any further without a resolution, and lumbered to a stop, presenting his hand to olivér. it had been the soldier's first real battle, and another virgin to war might have looked sick at the prospect, but olivér had the mechanical mind of a career general at only twenty. that, and he'd seen enough that day to steel a stomach, or at least empty it. "just hold onto it for now," he told auguste, and continued to lead the way.

auguste, practically drooling with fatigue and blood in his mouth, just followed as his compatriot. marlas was a true battlefield, used and churned. most of the corpses on the ground were half-naked achelons, although with the mud that coated them all, it was harder to distinguish friend from foe. scant strips of green streaked the landscape, slivers of untouched meadow the only reminder that, two days prior, there had been no dead men here, just wild lavender and honeysuckle and knee-high grasses. now it smelled like bowels and burning flesh. auguste's boots gave a great suckling sound in the mud every time he took a step. it was no longer clear what the ground was wet with.

the fort hadn't proved impenetrable: the achelon forces hadn't gotten within a mile of it. and so it loomed there in the distance while they walked through the beginnings of the veretian camp, the thousands of tents that had been erected there, banners of blue and gold for his father, of deep violet for their kemptian allies. at the first occupied tent, auguste stopped.

"bring me liquor," he called, guttural, and waited a moment for a response: a stringy teenager, barely old enough to drink himself, thrust a bottle into the prince's hand. his hair was matted with dried blood on one side, but he looked to be in moderately good spirits. at least until he saw the arrow plunged through auguste's hand, and where olivér had a stomach of steel, the boy turned rather green.

auguste pulled the stopper out of the bottle with his teeth and drained a third of it. it was high proof and it hurt to swallow, even after years of practice, but to endure a self-inflicted pain rather than one he had no control over felt right, gave him a modicum of power back. he poured another third onto his hand, crying out as he felt the liquid burn parts of his hand that were never meant to be exposed to the elements. blood diluted with clear liquor and turned his skin rosy pink. olivér had a knife, and he cut the barbed end off of the bottom of the arrow. the movement was quick but it still tugged the shaft inside of auguste's palm and he swore, hoarse.

there were a few men gathered around them now, soldiers curious to see their prince and victorious commander, wanting to help, or maybe just sadists who hadn't seen enough gore for one day. either way, auguste had to make an effort to focus on olivér, and even then his eyes slipped in and out of it, the urge to vomit materializing. "just fucking do it," he growled. olivér nodded curtly at someone, and auguste felt himself being restrained by three pairs of hands, one set clasping his forearm to hold him steady on his feet.

he went blind from the pain. olivér had ripped the arrow out in a mercifully swift motion, but there no real sense of duration when it came to that kind of misery. auguste's first instinct was to clutch his hand to his belly, to double up on himself and curl into a ball, to protect himself from the agony, but all four men held him back from it, and his scream bubbled up in his throat once more when he felt the rest of the liquor bottle being emptied on his now mutilated hand. he couldn't feel whether the liquor was hot or cold, just that it was caustic, and suddenly that he was free of the arrow. the pain was there, raging, but he felt catharsis. he was, once again, the only occupant of his body.

the men that had restrained him released him slowly, several giving him hearty pats on the back or neck, and he let himself be buffeted by them, watching olivér tear a piece of muslin from a bedroll. when he begun to wrap auguste's hand and wrist with it, the pain had become just barely tolerable, a means to propel auguste forward rather than hinder his progress. dizzy from it all, he straightened himself, and followed as olivér continued to lead the way to the royal tent.

he did not want to walk in. the flaps were closed, six men standing in a row in front of them, all of whom bowed and parted into two neat clusters when auguste approached. but he did not want to go in. he did not want to see what was inside. he screwed his face up in an attempt to dissuade his eyes from welling up, which only served to make him want to cry more: he felt an excruciating pain when he wrinkled his broken nose.

it was a wail inside that had auguste moving again. high and clear, it dissolved a part of him that he didn't know remained hard, and it jolted his legs to action, pushing past the flaps instantly before the guards had a chance to pull them back.

the scene inside was exactly as his mind's eye had pictured it. it had been so easy to imagine, like a vision or a prediction, a nightmare-come-true. his father, stripped of his armor, lay bare-chested on the wooden table in the center of the tent, broad and motionless, already his wounds cleaned. the medics had left. there were men outside, alive, still suffering, still in need of healing, and the only thing inside this tent was death, and the empty space a father left when he died in his son's arms, and the vacuum a king left when he died. laurent's slim frame was draped over their father's corpse, racked by the occasional sob.

why had he let laurent come to marlas at all? his father had insisted that he come, that a prince should see war firsthand, so that he would know what it meant to use soldiers as pawns. but auguste knew that laurent didn't need to see this kind of death to build empathy. he had it in spades, curious and sensitive. he'd be safe in the royal tent, the furthest from the front, their father had said. but safe from what? capture, a spear through the stomach? auguste had let his brother be maimed another way. he pictured laurent, wringing his hands, alone but for his guards; his father's arrival, carried by his men, leaving a river of blood in his wake, the one auguste now stepped over. laurent had been there for every second of it. the fumbling of the field physicians, been there to watch as they gave up. he had left him alone with this. he had left him alone.

he came to his knees on the bloodstained velvet, prostrating before this bastardized pieta, and laurent looked up.

auguste felt himself vomit up a sob. "i'm so sorry," was all he could manage, his arms open wide, desperate for an anchor as the tent flipped upside down in a slow, sickening tilt. but when laurent was in his arms, and they were crying together, the world folded in so it was just the two of them, together in the darkness.

"no more," he heard in his ear, a quiet plea that left him feeling acutely like he was falling from a great height.

"no more," he promised, his bandaged hand grasping the back of laurent's head. his hair was impossibly soft and clean, every part of him unmarred by the field. but pretty, gentle laurent seemed like he wanted to tuck himself into auguste's leather doublet, which was smeared with another man's entrails, and auguste knew that no matter how tidy his little brother looked, he was smeared with blood somewhere, too. it was painted on the backs of his eyelids, waiting until he slept. "i swear. on papa's life."

—————  
THIRTY.

**AIMERIC** was laurent's age. auguste remembered him as occasionally being part of the gaggle of boys who would try for his brother's favor and friendship at court now and then, but he hadn't been a consistent presence in arles. so when he'd come to join laurent's guard at eighteen, aimeric and laurent were only the barest of acquaintances, and aimeric, auguste came to appreciate, was not the rather numb-skulled kind of boy that a lifetime at court bred. he'd grown up in the country and had all the sweet charm of it, but also the good sense of a boy who knew fine horses and viticulture, and it was clear that laurent warmed to him instantly, and aimeric in kind.

in the few months that aimeric trained for the guard, auguste often spotted the two of them from the windows of the throne room, meandering through the gardens, competing in made-up foot races of great esteem. it was bittersweet, to see laurent so thoroughly enjoying the company of another boy his age, to see the way they looked at one another, shy and full of promise. it had been five years since their uncle had died, but for the best auguste could tell, this was the first time that laurent had actually reciprocated someone's affections. and he'd had his choice. there was, at all times, a veritable stream of would-be suitors at court now: sometimes they were explicit and proper in their requests, bending the knee and asking hennike's permission, and sometimes a soldier had to be turned off for not keeping his hands or intentions to himself. but auguste suspected that aimeric had just shown even the barest interest in what went on inside laurent's intricate mind, that for once laurent was not being coveted for his beauty alone. 

by the time that aimeric had completed his guardsman's training and laurent was pinning the gold starbust on the boy’s breastplate, it was clear neither could breathe properly in the company of the other. he had never seen his brother so routinely flushed, and he'd not yet seen aimeric so brave, whispering into the prince's ear at the celebrations, their fingers brushing constantly.

"just... stay close to him," auguste had said into his goblet, standing beside jord a dozen paces away, his free hand cradling bautizar's little head where his son stood, clinging idly to his father's calf.

"i would say that boy couldn't hurt a fly, but i did pass him. i'll keep good men at his door. i hope..."

jord had gone uselessly quiet, and when auguste met his eyes, there was a stony, timeless understanding between them. they both hoped, hoped that laurent might be past it, hoped perhaps the wounds might have healed by now, hoped laurent could be the mischievous, bawdy teenager that they both suspected he might have been in another life. all he'd known was pain in place of pleasure. and aimeric was beautiful, had all the traditional features of veretian nobility, the ones that auguste and laurent lacked: the soft brunette coloring, the tenderness of his cheeks, his doe eyes. they both hoped that he would be gentle enough.

—————  
THIRTY-THREE.

****

**JASMINE** was the predominant flower of fragrance in the courtyards at arles, the little white stars happy to climb columns and arches, but out in the gardens there was more variety: walks populated instead with roses or white lilac, lily of the valley, or auguste's favorite, the gravel paths flanked with overflowing marble planters of sweet alyssum, which bloomed around his birthday every year.

he walked with his hands clasped behind his back, a lesser tiara on his head, brilliant yellow jacket painting him a tall, broad vision in gold. damen, by contrast, seemed only happy when he was showing as much skin as he could possibly be permitted to in a foreign court, his short red cloak trailing him like a constant flourish.

"tell me, damen," auguste began in achelon, his tone and manner measured. until now, their conversations had been almost entirely those of close friends, easy jokes and unpolished honesty. but before, laurent had not been a factor. so auguste became another man. "is the king of akielos keen for the crown prince to marry a boy who cannot give him an heir or a throne?"

diminishing laurent into such simple terms made his stomach turn, but it was the reality of the situation. he knew his young friend and knew, _knew_ that damen had not thought this far ahead. he saw what was in front of him in the moment, which was frequently becoming just laurent's full lips and the timely witticisms that came out of them. he was simply the most recent in a long line of covetous suitors who had no idea the complexity of the creature they gazed dreamily at.

he'd caught damen off-guard. "my father?" the look on his face was that of pleasant confusion.

"if you woo laurent—" auguste sighed, and it was not his stomach that flipped this time but his heart, like a rock in his chest, "and i am fairly certain that you already have—and you bring him to ios, and you present him to your father, _why_ would theomedes bless that union?" his tone grew colder by the word, and by the time he saw recognition dawn on damen's dark face, his own was stony with disapproval and frustration. he did not like that it had taken so long for the prince to pick up the slack: it did not bode well for laurent if damen couldn't think beyond the hearts in his eyes.

"i thought... he has lands, and if there were gifts... a dowry." the word clearly felt strange on damen's tongue and it sounded strange, too, to auguste's ear. princes did not come with dowries, and the concept hadn't crossed auguste's mind before, not until he'd seen the way laurent gazed at damen while they'd danced. out of the corner of his eye, he had watched his little brother fall in love over the course of a simple waltz.

he paused at a boxwood arch, meticulously trimmed, and pinched a little leaf between his thumb and forefinger. long ago he'd been forced to train himself to be left-handed, when the arrow at marlas had rendered his right twitchy and permanently weakened, but little instinctive actions like fiddling still came naturally to it. "i think we will need to send you both armed with more than a ship full of gold. so i think it is perhaps time for you and i to talk about the type of king you will be, and how it will be when we both sit on thrones. i know that you find laurent charming. you are far from the first man to do so. he is..."

he found himself smiling at nothing at all, continuing their walk as if in a dream. "unparalleled. not just in beauty, or wit, or intellect, or temper. he is strategic and resourceful. he is veretian and kemptian both. he is shrewd and observant. and although part of him will always want to live a quiet life in the country as a horsemaster, he knows he is destined for greater things. he studies philosophy, geography, ethics—all with the rigor that you and i should have done. the kingly qualities i lack, he has in spades. and i suspect, damen, that you and i share our kingly qualities, and share in our lacking, and i suspect you have unwittingly fallen for a man who would make you a great king, rather than a..." he cast damen a glance, and his smile turned impish, once again an expression shared between friends. "rather middling one. as he has done for me."

————— **LAURENT** —————  
THIRTEEN.

****

**THEIR** uncle's rooms had a humidity to them that was unfamiliar to laurent. for a week, they had been kept out, all of his chambers sealed: the possibility of an outbreak of disease in the palace dictated strict quarantine. but when a week had passed and none of their uncle's servants had shown any symptoms, paschal's mood turned from hardly bridled terror to simply grim.

laurent had wandered into the wing with jord at his side, with his chin up and shaking a little, twisting his signet on his finger. paschal was standing outside of their uncle's sickroom, wiping his hands on a cloth that was spotted with different shades of red. he had dark smudges under his eyes from two weeks of near-constant care, but laurent knew that he had been sleeping more over the past few days. there was no path forward, and the king's physician did not need to run himself ragged trying to save a man whose body seemed to determined to give out. or so said auguste.

"how is he?" laurent asked, his voice small.

"he will not survive," paschal replied. he had always given laurent the kindness of plain speech. he smelled pungent, like body odor and sulfur. "illness or poison, he is dying. perhaps tonight."

laurent looked up at jord, who returned the gaze warily, albeit with a nearly invisible nod of his head. "i will say goodbye to him, then," laurent said rigidly, and he stepped past paschal to slip inside his uncle's bedchamber.

paschal's scent was not a quality the room shared, laurent found when entered. he had never felt such stifling heat before, but he knew the smell, as any boy who'd ever set foot on a battlefield would: decay, death, the smell of rotting flesh and shit. his uncle had not gotten a speck of mud on his armor at marlas, but it seemed he would die smelling like a soldier.

it was dark: the windows were shuttered, covered with heavy drapery, and the hearths were lit despite the warm weather outside. brass tubs stood in a row against a tapestried wall, all of them scrubbed clean and ready for use: they would go under the bed, beneath the hole that had been sawed into the wood. laurent had seen them being carried out by servants in a constant flow, at all hours of the night. and in the center of the room, the great bed. he knew every stitch in the covers, every pillow at the head of it. he knew the way the ornately carved wooden canopy felt beneath his fingers or against his cheek. the poor bed, he thought now, seeing it occupied by just a dark shape beneath a ruined coverlet. it had only ever seen the grotesque. after this, it would be used for firewood.

but through the dark, through the smell, there was something omnipresent and horrible: the sounds. an endless stream of grimaces and cries of agony, punctuated only by wet coughs. they were the most pitiful, miserable noises laurent had ever heard. his father had not cried thus as he died. he had gone fighting to stay lucid, controlling his breathing until he could breathe no longer. no matter what pain his uncle was in, laurent felt his lip curl at the histrionics of it all.

"why don't you let them open the windows, uncle?" he'd asked through the seemingly eternal moans that emanated from the bed. by the shape of him, laurent could see his uncle had lost perhaps half of his body weight. he had not eaten anything in six days, paschal had said.

"the breeze... is excruciating." his uncle's voice had a horrible quality, raw and pale, like how laurent imagined ghosts to sound. he wondered if his uncle would haunt the palace, and found himself rheumy with guilt and hatred. he wanted his uncle to die and wanted to die for thinking so, wanted his uncle to live and thought, if he did haunt the halls at arles, that laurent would burn the place down to be rid of him.

his voice, when it came, was devoid of affection, even though he'd tried to reach into his reserves, to at least pretend. but his uncle had long since stripped him of goodwill. "i'm sorry you're in so much pain," he droned, walking slowly around the perimeter of the room before he approached his uncle's bedside.

he had never been an ugly man. soft and noble, tall and broad, he had simply radiated power, influence, and to many, that was the making of a handsome man. but the creature in front of laurent was truly hideous. his eyes were bloodshot, his lips chapped to peeling. his skin was blue, devoid entirely of the flush of life, and his bony sternum was visible under the open neck of his nightshirt, which was damp and speckled with succus and viscera. he was coated in beading sweat, and his cheeks were so hollow that he simply looked like a skull. he was weakness personified, a husk of the man he had once been.

"isn't it strange, uncle?" laurent murmured, his voice high and trembling. he watched the man gasp and watched bile bubble at the corner of his mouth. "you look like a monster, but you are much less fearsome now. i wish that this were the version of you that haunted my nightmares. you would be so easy to vanquish then."

as if in response, his uncle screamed in agony. he clutched his stomach as if he'd been run through, which was exactly what laurent had pictured in his mind's eye: holding a sabre with both hands, feeling the resistance of the blade and pushing past it. he stopped in his slow pacing around the room, a child with his head in the clouds, pausing to watch something beautiful and unexpected, a grisly dream come true. his body felt like a corset, far too tightly laced, with a steel rod run through his shoulders to hold them rigid and straight. his uncle writhed violently, and laurent could hear the muffed, uneven splatter of liquid into liquid. the hole that had been carved in the middle of the bed was doing its job.

when the screaming had stopped, and his uncle laid instead on his side, his whole body heaving with the physical effort of its own undoing, laurent heard his voice through the dim light, raw and weak. "you... did this to me. wretched fucking boy."

the accusation felt like a wave, inflicting him with at first a momentary sense of dread and then, a violent bloom of nausea. he felt the horrible tang of vomit in the back of his throat and, panicked, swallowed back, leaving his tongue and nose burning from the caustic threat his stomach made.

"you are sick, uncle," laurent insisted. but he knew that no one was sure of that.

" _i am poisoned_ , you miserable slut," his uncle hissed, and laurent could not see his face, but could heard the spittle and slime around his lips. his own skin, which at his healthiest could be described as glowing in its pallor, felt clammy and cold.

"poisoned? uncle, no. do you accuse me?"

there was no response. the heaving body in the bed simply gasped between great bellows of misery. but laurent was not ready to be dismissed, and so he began his slow meander around the perimeter of the room once more, rounding the foot of the bed until he could see his uncle's face once again.

there was a fresh bloodstain on the ruined blanket that he'd pressed his hollow cheek to, his lips smeared with it, and he gasped like a fish out of water. his skin wet, his eyes wide and panicked, he breathed erratic and shallow. laurent, feeling both brave and stupid, stepped forward, and knelt his slender knees on the low cushioned bench beside the bed. it had been set there for this purpose: for all of them to say their goodbyes in a dignified manner.

"uncle?" his words came out softer than he'd anticipated they might. laurent was speaking for just the two of them, putrescine filling his sinuses, leaving his head singing in agony. "haven't i given you pleasure? beyond compare, you said."

it was as if his uncle could not speak. he was drowning, every breath becoming more ragged, a small stream of blood now leaking from the corner of his mouth. his coy brown eyes, laurent saw, were violently pink now, irises like blotted black ink stains. a monster. laurent felt as if he himself were possessed, his whole body cold with fever as he reached out mechanically, taking his uncle's clenched fist in his soft little hands. "will you pleasure me now? i would feel such ecstasy watching you die." his own words horrified him, but he found that speaking them aloud quelled the insistent vomit that hung in the back of his throat, ready to overtake him at any time. it settled his stomach. his hate was purifying.

he had knelt thus at his father's side. aleron had been still formidable, rosy, vivacious cheeks and a barrel chest, his soft chestnut curls cut close, peppered with grey. he hadn't shown fear as he died. his face, instead, mud-spattered and twisted in pain, had been the expression of a man thrashing, fighting to keep both feet in this world. but laurent watched his uncle, chastened, and there was no strength left in his wrecked body to fight. terror was written on every inch of his grey face. and when he coughed up a thick, amorphous blood clot, which hung on his chin, it was the last breath to leave his body.

laurent blinked slowly, their eyes still locked, although only one pair could see. his uncle's hand twitched in his, and laurent turned his gaze so that he could regard it: clammy but still hot with fever. he ran his fingers over the heel of his uncle's palm, the deep lines above it, pressed his fingernails gently into the meat of his thumb. they were such soft hands, tools for drafting documents and touching pets and eating gluttonously. he knew the feeling of them on every part of his body. palm to palm, laurent threaded their fingers together momentarily. "were you killed?" he asked softly, studying the differences in their hands, his knees aching. "murdered? who would have done such a thing?"

he was still for a long moment, as if waiting for an answer that would not come, although in truth, he was simply searching his heart for it. poison. a tricky, shadowy way to dispatch a man. it was not in the arsenal of the average soldier, men who would find more comfort and satisfaction in killing with their bare hands or sharp steel. he dipped his head down, and reverently pressed his lips to the back of his uncle's hand. "i hope the killer's conscience is clear," he breathed, and slowly stood, his rapidly growing body protesting with clicks and pops. and he imitated the sound when, with a forceful shove, he broke all of the fingers on his uncle's lifeless hand and let it fall to the bed.

he only opened the chamber door enough to slip his slim body through. in the hall, there were tables erected, littered with clean linens, water, tinctures and teas, a mobile physician's ward that had been built up over two weeks. his uncle's guard and his own sat on long benches, elbows propped on the tables; pascal whipped something in a mortar, but paused and looked up when he heard laurent.

"he is dead, i think." his voice was devoid of emotion, his face, too.

as they had at the beginning of this nightmare, he and jord walked away from his uncle's chambers hand-in-hand.

—————  
EIGHTEEN.

****

**IN** the evening, when his door opened without a knock, laurent stilled very quickly. it was unusual that someone would be so familiar: jord or auguste, really, were the only two candidates he could imagine, and even they usually did him the courtesy of knocking as they entered.

he had been pacing with a book open in his palm, and now looked up from the pages to see aimeric. soft, sweet, eyes like weak tea. laurent felt as if his chest was caving in on itself, both short of breath and swollen of heart at the same moment. "hello," he whispered, not meaning to be so quiet, but aimeric heard and pressed his rosy lips into a firm line, fighting back a smile. his new starburst pin on his breastplate glittered in the lamplight.

"i've been thinking," laurent's new guard began, pushing off from where he'd been standing with his back to the door, afraid perhaps to move further into the room. "about the oath i took today. to protect you with my life. to keep your confidences, to serve you in all things, to be loyal to you above all others. to kill for you, to bleed for you, to die for you."

laurent remembered the oath. it moved him every time he heard a man take it, but it had sucked the breath from his lungs to hear it from aimeric. "it gives one... much to think about," he blustered a little. he couldn't move, rooted to the spot where he'd stopped, his body vibrating as aimeric approached him cautiously.

"i meant it all. but i wouldn't do it out of loyalty to the crown, or honor, or any stupid oath."

they had never exchanged words like this. they had touched only sparingly, brushes of fingers when they'd both reached for the same thing, aimeric kissing his prince's hand in fealty. to hear words, real ones, spoken aloud, that solidified whatever hectic energy had built up between them, had laurent feeling off-kilter for so many months, heart feeling wounded whenever he garnered one of aimeric's sweet smiles. he just blinked. dreaming, maybe, he thought.

"i would do it because i love you."

laurent heard himself whisper. "oh." and then aimeric was kissing him, tenderly, his arms wrapped tight around laurent's neck. it was sudden and sweet and suffocating, and laurent went to move away from the overwhelming intimacy of it because it all felt like too much to process in one moment. when he tried to inch back, he found his path blocked by aimeric's stubborn embrace, and the lights went out in his mind.

when he blinked them alight again, aimeric was on the floor.

his lip had been split wide open, blood already spurting down his chin. laurent held his book in both hands, knuckles white against the cover below where he saw the smear of blood. it fell to the floor as his fingers released their vice hold on it.

"i'm sorry, i—" aimeric mumbled, eyes wide and terrified, his speech foolish with the shock and pain of being struck so hard, his white teeth slick with his own blood. his hand came to his jaw and he cried out in pain. laurent felt his throat tighten and lump. there were two white teeth on the floor, loose from their master’s pretty mouth, blood spattered in a little trail behind them.

" _i'm_ sorry," he gasped, taking a step towards aimeric, who scrambled backwards and, uncoordinated, stood himself up.

laurent realized when he moved that he was shaking violently. "i didn't mean to, i-i don't, i don't not want to kiss you." his ankles felt tied up in his double negatives, in what he'd done, how hard the instincts inside him were fighting: have aimeric dragged out and whipped or kneel and kiss every drop of blood away. he hated both parts of himself, and _every_ part of himself, and he blinked against his tears.

aimeric clearly didn't understand. why would he have? he hesitated, looking like he wanted to do a hundred things at once, but finally decided on a curt, jerky bow, from which he picked up laurent's book. there was blood on the floor as if there'd been a brawl, not a confession of love. and aimeric simply laid the book on a small table, backing shakily out of the room. laurent choked out a strangled, childish sob, but the look of terror that aimeric had given him held him still. and then he was gone, door closed behind him, a little smear of blood on the egg-shaped ivory handle.

the next day, aimeric was transferred off of the rotation at laurent's chambers, and they saw each other only in passing, and laurent didn't know whether to hate his body or his mind for breaking aimeric's heart and his jaw. so he simply hated both.

"did you hit guion's son in the face?" jord had been the only one to question aimeric's official explanation for his broken jaw: drunk from celebrating his appointment, he'd slipped and hit it on the stone steps in the prince's wing. but laurent knew better than to hope jord might not ask. he was the only one who might have surmised the truth. "he came into the barracks before dawn, hysterical. but no one seems to be able to find any blood on any of the stairs. i did, however, see earlier that someone did a fairly poor job mopping some up from your chamber floor."

"he tried to kiss me," laurent had said curtly. they sat thigh-to-thigh on the edge of the wall around the royal training yards, downing goblet upon goblet of water after jord had taught laurent a new parry, shirt collars open, sweating in the cool early spring air.

"he was unwelcome?" of course he looked for clarification, and of course it made laurent wince, grimacing as he panted from exertion. it was a difficult parry. "you seemed fond of each other."

"he was very welcome," he sighed, defeated in heart and mind and body, pouring the remnants of his goblet over the top of his head and raking the water through his hair. his hands were rosy and veiny, a newer development. every day they looked more like auguste's, although laurent suspected they would always be finer, longer-fingered, softer, with fewer scars. he looked at his palm, his fingers, studying it. "as soon as he got near me, i..."

"...hit him in the face," jord finished, filling in the pause.

laurent nodded, dropping his hand to his knee. "i don't even remember doing it. he was just..." he breathed deep, closing his eyes, struggling to recall the way he'd felt, the last thing he remembered before he'd seen aimeric on his floor, bleeding and terrified. it was, beneath everything, his own terror. "he was too close to me."

all jord offered was silence and a pat on the knee, his hand laying atop laurent's for a few long moments before they stood up in unison. but it was all laurent needed to feel some of the guilt peel away, for the memory of aimeric's terrified face to fade a little in his mind's eye.

—————  
TWENTY.

****

**LAURENT'S** chambers were rather more bare than they were usually. his trunks, brought from chastillon, were still in the midst of being unpacked, and he had looked at them more than once and wondered if there was any purpose in unpacking them at all. would he just bring them with him to ios, if he went? he would bring different things, he thought, then what he'd taken with him for his summer at the hunting lodge. but these things, too, he wanted with him: his favorite books, which he painstakingly re-organized on the great bookshelves in his apartments.

there was a knock at the door, one that waited patiently for laurent to respond, and damen came in, looking mildly sheepish and a bit ruffled. laurent felt always overdressed in his presence: in breeches and a shirt and apricot brocade housecoat, the only things bare on his body were his unstockinged feet and undone shirt collar. damen, by contrast, seemed to have leapt out of bed and wrapped himself in a pillowcase. he held a rather large box in his hands, carved from very achelon olive wood with a magnificent gold latch.

"don't think i thought you above gifts," he teased, and laurent very neatly shelved the book he'd been moving, rearranging them by subject.

"above them? in my experience, the more highborn, the more covetous. i'm far from above being spoiled."

they sat together on a long chaise of dark silk and laurent took the box into his lap. inside, nestled in velvet, was an exquisite silver decanter, inlaid with rare cabochon star rubies in a hypnotic geometric pattern. the expense was obvious and enormous. flushing a little, he planted a hand on the settee between them and leaned forward to press a chase kiss on damen's dark cheek in thanks. obvious, too, was the weight: laurent's forearm flexed as he lifted it and held it up to catch the light, and he hummed in approval. "should we drink out of it?" he suggested, looking appropriately pleased, and damen clapped his hands to his bare thighs in happy agreement, calling in a servant. laurent crinkled his nose at how high the chiton rose whenever his suitor sat down. it was a horrible tactic of distraction. weaponized thighs.

they drank a dry wine, and although laurent had only a passing knowledge of vinification, damen seemed happy and eager to absorb as much as he could. achelos had grapes, but they were different than the kinds that thrived on the veretian hills, and when laurent had pulled out a massive tome with botanical illustrations, damen didn't seem bored at all—although he did seem more interested in the physical sampling of the grapes than the soil conditions that each thrived in. again, laurent was struck with the thought that whatever he talked about, wherever he wandered, damen would follow along, fascinated. it was a feeling that was becoming reliable, which he liked.

"i don't drink as much as some men," laurent mused, closing the book with a great deal of effort and transferring it to a trunk already laden with them. "i enjoy it, i like the taste, but—"

"you're not a drunkard? that's good," damen interrupted, smiling over the lip of his own goblet. laurent rolled his eyes and, with a flourish, tossed his yellow hair.

"have you ever seen a drunk with skin like mine? even the young ones look worn-out." the boast was meant to be, as they always were, equal parts sarcastic and goading. laurent would reject accusations of vanity, but instead thought that he had a practical understanding of the power of his own beauty. that being said, he was still a boy susceptible to well-laid compliments.

"i've never seen anyone with skin like yours." like that one, which perhaps he had set damen up for, but it didn't cheapen the effect. knowing that he glowed in candlelight didn't negate the good feeling he got when he was reminded.

"i just meant i don't drink to get drunk. it's led to some unpleasant experiences."

"i think that's the nature of drunkenness. it's a little bit of a roll of the dice."

laurent just hummed in answer, looking down at the wine in his goblet, the sediment that clung to the edges like tea leaves. he wondered if they could be read the same way, and thought about the _pleasant_ experiences he had heard coming from the bottom of a bottle, from jord and orlant and auguste, even. men who imbibed happily, men who weren't afraid of the loss of control. they could take care of themselves.

"do you want to tell me why you're afraid of it?" damen broke the silence, and when laurent looked up, blinking, he saw damen so reposed that he thought maybe he'd misheard the question. he wasn't tense or bashful: he just sat with his goblet resting on his thigh, his arm propped on the back of the chaise, chin in his hand, regarding laurent with patient curiosity. laurent didn't need clarification on the subject of the inquisition. but he felt an ache in his head when he went to speak.

"like i said, unpleasant experiences." it was the most he'd ever given anyone, which was the least possible. damen narrowed his eyes and pursed his lips, like he were playing a tricky card game. in truth, he was.

"often?" damen clearly chose his line of questioning carefully, and his casual, open posture had laurent feeling a little like a deer being lured with a handful of grain.

laurent shook his head curtly. "when i was young." he met damen's gaze and found much conversation to be had just in looking at one another. damen had a sadness in his eyes and something that might have been pity, but he found that pity was not unwelcome. he didn't want to be looked at like he was unbroken, just that he was fixable, maybe. men had told him before that whatever was wrong with him, whatever had made him deny their advances, could be "fixed," but the idea of it now felt less repulsive. and it wasn't what damen offered in the end, anyway.

"you don't mind kissing," he observed instead, and laurent winced. he worried suddenly whether he was revealing himself to be too broken to be worth the effort. he recalled the way that damen had kissed him, lost in a vacant wing of the palace. he had somehow been fearless then, and doubted that he could be again.

"even that was unusual for me. the last time someone tried that, i... hurt them." he felt color high on his cheeks and glanced up at the ceiling to avert his eyes. "but for some reason, i didn't want to hit you." he gave a furtive, crooked shrug, and wrinkled his nose. he wouldn't bother trying to explain when he couldn't.

"well, how did you get that bay mare to be so brave on the hunt?"

laurent blinked at the question, and felt a little surge of anger as he processed the comparison, which fizzled out into, strangely, flattery. there wasn't really a more majestic creature than méduse. it was a complimentary equivalence. but he still glared up at damen from below a furrowed brow, resentful even if just on the surface. "auguste did it," he snipped, knowing this petulant answer was not the one damen had been looking for, and did nothing to further his metaphor, and also, intimidatingly inserted his brother into a conversation about sex. 

but damen just looked at laurent like he was a patient nurse correcting a difficult child. "how do you get _any_ horse to be brave on the hunt?" his exasperation was thin, a veil over the affection that seemed to be omnipresent whenever he regarded laurent.

this time, laurent begrudgingly acquiesced. "you show them the things that might spook them. take them out with a seasoned horse that won't shy. make them feel safe, until they don't see deer and boars and felled trees as threats." he said it with all the resentful boredom of a child reciting times tables to a tutor. "are you going to feed me apples when you pull out your cock?" one of his eyebrows arched so high it ached.

damen did, finally, falter in his patient adoration, visibly taken aback by laurent's language, and he turned his ruddy-cheeked face into his hand, pressing his thumb and forefinger to his eyes. he was not frustrated, laurent realized, but bashful. "i just thought... if you wanted to do things one at a time, until you feel comfortable." when he had finished with his temporary shyness, he peeked out from behind his fingers, and laurent was there to meet his gaze, a little suspicious, but beyond that, a little game.

"the special ones don't let just anyone get on," laurent offered, materializing the words that had hung unsaid between them, the completion of a poorly-chosen metaphor. but if it was a little tasteless, it was apropos.

—————

****

**EVERY** day was a haze of honey and nerves. laurent would wake from a blissful dream that he could rarely remember but always left him pink-cheeked when he rose. every morning there would be a new gift with his breakfast: a golden pin in the shape of a bolting yearling, eyes of diamonds; a fine achelon dagger whose butt was a roaring lion's head, a ruby in his mouth; five hundred isthman deep-water pearls in a bronze box that he had sent to the seamstress to use as trim on a new jacket. he doted over them all like a shy child, nibbling his pastries and admiring every new shiny, sparkling thing. when he wore the pin, auguste caught it between his fingers and inspected it with a cocked brow. "this is very nice," he'd said, and the suspicious way he'd said it had just made laurent all the more coy.

everyone began to treat him differently. he had always been well-liked by the staff and the court, although it had always felt as if everyone regarded him as a bit dangerous, like his beautiful new dagger. to their credit, he had spent his first day with that gift walking the halls, practicing the casual flips and flicks of the hand that jord had taught him on boring evenings, learning the weight of this new knife. but he knew he had a reputation for being more interested in books than joviality, and had dressed enough people down in the palace that no one dared cross him, lest they incite his ire—or worse, auguste's. word must have travelled that the prince had been courted into sweetness: squires and servants were more keen to strike up conversation, to compliment him on his manner. guards who had always been friendly with him became more comfortable joking with him, blurring the lines between soldiers and true friends. bows of deference were paired with smiles. it just seemed like everyone knew: if laurent was walking alone through the halls, he was on his way to or from his bronze achelon prince, his mood buoyant.

nikandros had stayed with his bronze achelon prince, too, and competed with laurent for his attention. it didn't bother laurent. if he offered a game of pall-mall or the opportunity to try the new vaskian beechwood bows on the archery course, it was often implicit that nikandros was welcome to join, and laurent would have jord or one of his other guardsmen come along as a second of sorts. if the offer was instead to take lunch to the gardens, that was an invitation to damen only, and laurent always felt smug leading his willing suitor away from nikandros' blatant frown.

the gardens at arles were without contest. there was no palace that had such immaculately kept grounds, and they were always speckled with courtiers and gardeners. each section had a purpose or theme: the tropiques, where citrus trees and palms grew around fountains tiled in bright blue; the nuage, a carpet of snow-in-summer circled by towering cypress trees. every member of the family, too, had their own section, the queen's garden full of fragrant magnolias. the prince's was an ode to lavender. it made any lunch taken there mellow and peaceful, fat clouds moving lazily in the sky, the warmth of the day inspiring nothing but drowsiness and low voices.

laurent ate a cherry and swallowed the pit, sitting with his legs stretched out in the downy, undulating fescue, boots long-since shucked. he looked down over his shoulder at damen, who, with his hands behind his head where he lay in the grass, might have been asleep. they had been quiet for many minutes, and it was a comfortable silence: it seemed like they could slip in and out of conversation without friction, and simply enjoyed each other's quiet company. but laurent—despite a heavy lunch and the calm of an early autumn afternoon—felt moved to do _something_ , an itch below the skin.

he remembered their first meeting only vaguely, the way he had slammed face-first into what had then seemed like an unfairly defined wall of muscle, but thinking back on it, it was hard to reconcile that body with the one that lay beside him. damen was now twice as wide, muscle visible under every plane of tan skin. it was a marvel that his every mannerism seemed to be gentle, since most of the men that laurent had seen with similar physiques were career soldiers, hard-edged and gruff even when they were fond of him, as jord was. he hadn't really seen damen fight, and had a hard time picturing it. it didn't seem like the man had the capacity for anger at all. not with the way his face settled, like even in rest he was thinking of something lovely or clever, his lips always curved just upwards the same way that laurent's seemed to default to a little frown. and his straight nose, and his chin that grew dark with stubble by the late afternoon, and his eyelashes like the fringe of an awning.

silently, laurent leaned down to kiss him. it felt more or less like sticking his hand in a hole that he'd found in the forest, entirely unsure of what lurked beneath the soil, but there had always been a wildness in him that broke the hottest horses, that wagered his signet ring in a card game with his guardsmen, that said whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted, to whomever he wanted. he had just not anticipated it to rear its head here, in this way.

damen seemed obviously startled, but just as obviously keen, bringing his hands from behind his head to cradle laurent's cheek without missing a beat. suddenly, deeply furious with himself, laurent realized he did not know what to do. he had never initiated a kiss before. he didn't want to think of it, but it occurred to him that all his uncle had ever taught him was the breadth of his own anger, the depth of his own hate. but with the gentlest nuzzle, damen dissolved the thought. he kissed like he danced, a supportive, secondary player, there to spot laurent while he climbed. he wasn't made of feats of strength or hunger: with an angle of his head, a parting of his lips, he just showed laurent the way. when laurent parted for breath, forehead pressed to damen's, they breathed the same air for a long moment. and then, with all the ferocity of a kitten butting an ankle with its head, damen arched up, and they were kissing once more.

when the perhaps inevitable finally happened, it wasn't that laurent didn't expect it, and the surprise he felt wasn't entirely unpleasant. he just somehow didn't put two and two together, didn't realize the natural progression: that as their lips parted more for one another, eventually they would be parting for a reason, and eventually, he'd feel the slippery touch of damen's tongue. he reared back at it, bringing his hand to his mouth, feeling his lips wet. but instead of horror, he was struck with a fit of laughter. when he opened his eyes, damen's expression was something he wanted to have painted by a great master: lips red, eyes dark, equal parts enthralled and surprised by laurent's sudden departure. when he realized that laurent was not a flight risk, however, he grinned. and perhaps laurent would have that painted instead, or also, and he could fill a hall with all the variations of damen's look of adoration.

laurent laughed, and as damen sat up slowly in the grass, he felt a little as he had the first time he'd kissed this way: dizzy, wobbly, like damen was the anchor to his vision and when he moved, the whole world swam behind him. this time, though, it didn't make him ill. it was the kind of funny weightlessness he felt on a very scopey horse, or when he'd jumped on auguste's bed as a small child, or caught his own reflection in the mirror in a very nice new set of riding leathers.

"no tongue," damen breathed, the answer to an unasked question or agreement.

"no it—it just feels..." laurent squeezed his eyes closed and gave his head a jerky little shake, smiling through his words. "strange. _wet_." his smile switched to a grimace and back again, and peering just barely through his lashes, he saw damen's expression shift and watched him lean in at a glacial pace.

"it feels good when it's wet sometimes. i think the more you want someone, the better it feels." 

and so when they kissed again, when damen brushed his fingers over the shell of laurent's ear to tuck his hair back, he tried to let himself do just that: _want_. it hadn't ever been hard to let himself need. his heart had never been difficult to access: it did backflips when it saw someone handsome, when someone paid him a pretty compliment, when he heard very sweet poetry. but there was something else to kissing than just heart, and if he could quiet the way it hammered for a minute, maybe he'd be able to tap into a current that generally felt, at best, dormant. desire, that elusive untapped energy that seemed to lay behind an impenetrable wall of scar tissue.

he let himself inhale through his nose, to quiet the smell of the lavender and focus instead on the gentle tang of sweat that, he thought, might have come from the warm skin on the back of damen's neck. then he stopped himself inhaling altogether and let his breath build up in his lungs, holding it until he felt himself tremble a little with the effort. _please_ , he begged his mind. it would kill him to spend another day locked away when someone had finally come along with a key. and he felt a monumental shift in his gut when they broke for air, and damen's hand was at his waist: instead of recoiling or simply going still at the touch, he leaned into it, pressing their chests together. as always, damen reacted like he'd been given the greatest prize imaginable, and when they fell back into the grass together, laurent began to understand that sometimes, it did feel good when it was wet.

—————

****

**AUGUSTE** peered at him. laurent simply pushed his fork around on his plate, then set it down and opted instead to wipe up the remnants of the raspberry sauce with his fingertip, and he glared at his brother as he stuck it into his mouth. "what?" he grumbled around his mouthful.

auguste went into his best impression of innocence, which made laurent glare even harder, his nose wrinkling at the bridge. "nothing!"

with a _pop_ , laurent dislodged his now clean finger, and with a _snap_ , he bared his teeth at his brother while he leaned forward to rinse it off in a fresh dish of water. impish, he cheerily flicked the droplets at auguste's face. and in a blink he was up very close to auguste's damp nose, since his brother had grabbed him behind the head and brought them together, forehead to forehead. it was the roughhousing that laurent would only ever allow from auguste, but also the intimacy. not many people came within kissing distance of laurent. one more recently, but still, less than could be counted on one hand.

"are you happy?" auguste whispered, eyes searching.

laurent hiccuped a laugh, pausing dumbly. "yes." and auguste's lips were on his forehead in a chaste kiss with a great deal of pressure behind it, and then laurent was released to smile, a little dazed by the unexpected intensity of the moment.

auguste heaved a sigh of resignation, and addressed their dinner company: damen, at laurent's side, nikandros beside him, hennike beside her elder son, liesel and her uncle feliks and brother kristof, who like damen and nikandros had stayed beyond the king's birthday revelries. it was, when one stepped back, a room full of monarchs. had auguste not have already ascended, it would have been a room full of men who would be kings of their respective nations—and the people who loved them desperately. "i think it is time, my dear friends." auguste planted his broad, scarred hands on the table, a man ready to plot, addressing the room. "my brother is happy. we must discuss what we might do to ensure his happiness' permanence."

laurent met liesel's eyes, and they were sparkling, full of mischief and promise.

"maybe a pumpkin tart," laurent suggested, sitting up a bit straighter as he realized the entire room was looking at him, their expressions alternating between delighted and conspiratorial. even nikandros looked like he could passably tolerate laurent's presence. they were not talking about pie, but levity was sometimes all laurent could manage when he was feeling a bit nervous. "but this isn't about presents for me, is it?"

"have you not gotten enough presents?" perhaps nikandros could tolerate laurent's presence, but he could not deny himself the pleasure of a barb, even if it bounced off of laurent's nose like it was a feather.

"i have gotten _some_ very nice presents," laurent snipped haughtily. but his insolence lasted only a moment, curbed twofold when damen leaned in and whispered a sweetly admonishing " _dear_ ," and when laurent caught his mother's gaze, which was a bit withering.

auguste had let the interruption go on, but he forged ahead when it was clear that the sidebar was over. "our kingdoms could have common goals, a common future. if the achelon throne is to be tied to the veretian as veretian is to kemptian, our three families would control the western seaboard, two thousand miles of coastline. every port from isthma to visby."

laurent did not expect damen's voice to be the next he heard, and he started a little, looking from his brother to his lover. "my father will need more convincing than just elimination of tariffs and a navy," he sighed, giving a great shrug. it did not seem to laurent like this was a negotiation between three separate parties, but rather the three of them coming together to agree on what to offer, as a collective, at another negotiation altogether. they were pooling resources, he realized.

"all of this is because i can't give you an heir?" he asked, refilling his goblet with wine. he would need a bit more to get him to sit still through this discussion, and he cast a sideways glance at damen, who looked a little sheepish. "how tiring."

"it's understandable." again, a voice he had not expected: liesel, who sat back in her chair, looking pointedly at laurent, that glimmer of mischief still present in her hazel eyes. "what?" she squeaked at his indignant glare. "from an outsider's perspective, it _is_! a king like theomedes doesn't care how elegant you are, or how many languages you speak. there are princesses from here to the bottom of the ocean that could give damianos a son, and he would pick them over you regardless of your constitution." 

laurent sniffed. "i know that." he did: he understood, vaguely, how something like that might be important to someone who cared about it. but for laurent, having an heir of his own had been relatively inconsequential, a choice he would make on his own. to a crown prince, it was as important as the quality of their rule, if not more. it was why baltazar had been such a celebrated blessing so early in auguste and liesel's marriage. he understood. "it's still tiring."

it was, incredibly, nikandros who spoke next, and it was more or less directed at laurent: not an insult but something akin to actual, genuine, neutral speech. it was a marvel. "the prince of kempt and i had an idea," he grunted, nodding with his chin across the table at kristof, and they shared a highly collusive look, like two boys who had hatched a very naughty plan, "that we think might be the solution. is the prince an adequate liar?"

laurent blinked dumbly at this, processing the question, and then surveying nikandros with all the suspicion in the world. "an _adequate liar_?" he repeated sourly. "you think so little of me, kyros. i may be a spoiled little pig, but i am an honest one."

nikandros shrugged, looking unbothered. "you'll have to start practicing, then."

when laurent cocked his brow, nikandros scowled, picking up on the joke a moment too late. "i need no practice. what must i lie about?"

—————

****

**THE** royal apartments were anchored by one massive courtyard, three hundred feet long by a hundred feet wide. auguste, liesel, and their son shared the long west wall, while laurent and his mother split the east wall down the middle. the courtyard in the center was private only to them: it was where the royal children played under their parents' watchful eyes, where the family could take repose with one another without worrying about who or what might have been going on at court. it was not the first night that laurent and auguste had meandered through the willow trees together well after midnight, the stars above them as brilliant as the diamonds that dotted their apartment ceilings. some days, laurent knew, it was the only time that auguste could have a moment away from being king.

"you've always known, haven't you?" laurent said gloomily, fingering a slender willow leaf as they passed under a particularly languid branch. his low voice was speckled with the sounds of a cheerily gurgling fountain.

"you've always known, too." auguste looked at his little brother with an impressed golden eyebrow poised high. they could have been talking about literally anything. it didn't matter.

laurent sighed. "i don't know if i want to move to ios. i've never even been there. aristokles says it's very fucking hot, and that i'll get sunburned every day, and that i'll have to wear a _chiton_ and there's no grass for the horses." by the time he was finishing rattling on, he felt rather as gloomy as he looked.

"that's why i thought maybe you would take delfeur with you. as a place to spend time that feels more like home."

laurent paused with his nose halfway up to one of the white flowers on the bitter orange trees: he had intended to bury his face into it and capture every whiff of the sweet, tart scent. auguste's words were rather more sweet, and tart, too.

"we would not give it to theomedes..." he ventured, looking at his brother with slight suspicion. he did not want to have misunderstood.

auguste barked a laugh. "fuck, no! i would give it to you. you would be lord of the border between us and achelos. we could spend summers there together, all of us. winters, maybe, too. i confess that having a child in this human rabbit warren of arles often leaves me wanting for more fresh air, more green land. and i know there is lots of green land at marlas now, once again. flowers grow there. around your birthday, the fields explode with golden poppies."

"theomedes would kill me so that it might go to damen," laurent said bitterly. damen spoke with deep affection for his father, but laurent now had the man squarely cast as a villain in his mind.

"i doubt he'll be thinking much about _your_ death when he hears your plan. and in any case, none of your titles or lands would go to damen. he is not veretian. it will go to my new child. who, i think, could be your heir, if you wanted one. varenne, marche," auguste began to count on his fingers, "acquitart, delfeur, and chastillon might simply forevermore be the lands of the second child of vere. it is quite a lot of land."

laurent stopped short again, but this time it was because the suspicion and hesitation was sloughing off in favor of a swell in his heart. "new child? as in, the child exists?" he breathed, and auguste nodded with a self-depreciating, tight lipped smile.

"in about four months, he will exist in your arms."

electrified, laurent leapt to auguste's side and clung to his arm, leaning all his weight onto his brother's highly sturdy frame, and gave him a vigorous shake. they walked that way for a few long paces, laurent clutching auguste like a doting wife might her husband, devoted, his cheek pressing against the soft blue silk of auguste's epaulette ribbons. "then yes, maybe. i would give your child my lands, and childebert's diadem." he wondered if it would be a boy or a girl, niece or nephew, but knew that his father's bloodline had always been male. he wondered if bautizar would be to them everything auguste was to laurent. he did pause, however: "chastillon is not mine to give, though."

auguste feigned surprise, which was one of laurent's favorite impressions. "isn't it?" he hummed in mock thought. "whose is it?"

"yours, idiot," laurent groaned, which he knew would simply make auguste lean harder into the farce, which in turn would make laurent laugh. reliable. they'd had twenty years of practice for this act.

"oh! well then. no one will get angry at me for giving it to you, too. i rule enough without having to worry about four hundred horses."

laurent smiled privately to himself, watching their matching boots stroll in time with one another. his mind swam a bit with all of the implications, what it all meant, what kind of future he could now carve out for himself and for damen, too, if he liked. he could not have a kingdom of his own, but auguste would give him enough of theirs that they might truly share it. it was auguste who broke the silence once more.

"ios will be a test for you. it is hot. you must stay out of the sun. but the horses colic less without the sweet grass, and after your first hot day there, you'll like a chiton. they _are_ easy to get off." the king of vere only just got the sly comment in before his brother stuck his foot out and tripped him for it.

"that's the spirit," auguste grunted, stumbling forward and dragging laurent with him by the arm. for a half of a minute they roughhoused, until laurent felt himself simply picked up and tossed over his brother's shoulder, a maneuver that, infuriatingly, worked as well now as it had when laurent was three. he heard auguste's voice, full of mischief, over his shoulder. "warm up those murder muscles, little laur. we need you a capable of a convincing act of fratricide."

—————

****

**LAURENT** had always felt comfortable in the stable yard. since he could stand he'd been closest with the stable boys and grooms, the horsemaster and the farrier and the sellier. he could tan leather and sew a saddle of the utmost veretian craftsmanship all on his own. he could break any foal, he was the one who slipped into the stalls of the ones that were too wild, too violent. horses didn't scare him, ever. he'd gotten over that the first time he'd been kicked in the stomach, the first time he'd been thrown head-first into a stone wall, the first time he'd been bitten so hard that he bled and bruised for months after. he had been a decent, enthusiastic rider as a youngster, but at thirteen, he had thrown himself into it. and horses had thrown all of their worst at him, and it had been nothing compared to his uncle's worst. and so that became laurent's home, second only to the library, and second to none on days where it was too irresistibly beautiful out to study.

the calluses on laurent's hands were in the places where he rode bare-handed, which he did sometimes, or where a heavy-mouthed horse had rubbed through his leather gloves. his scars, a petite one on his right shoulder and the site of the very bad bite wound, barely a shadow, on his elbow, were from riding. he had never been run through with a blade, never even nicked. he had never been hit in the face so hard that he bled—or lost teeth, or had his jaw broken.

and so the training yard was not somewhere he had always felt _comfortable_ , although he'd always felt welcome, because it was where he could always, without fail, find auguste, and where auguste would do all he could to include laurent in whatever he was doing.

laurent knew a few siblings, knew that often they drifted apart or fought, or that the elder sibling would slight or ostracize the other, and that the younger might be a rather big tattle-tale. but those were foreign concepts to him. auguste had never been too tired, too suave, too old, too busy to love laurent. the palace guards were all good men, and they all felt like older brothers, too, sometimes: they weren't affectionate like auguste, of course, but they were never hesitant to pick laurent up on their shoulders when he was a very young boy, never hesitant to rib with him, shock him with their senses of humor only to be nonplussed by his vocabulary a month later. and they would all have died for him, too, and for auguste, and that had made what they all had love.

laurent wiped his hands on the rag tucked into his breeches, adjusting his suspender on his shoulder where it had begun to slip down. he had just thrown grain with a groom and the space between his fingers was sticky from sweet feed.

"are you gonna go over to the fighting yards?" _fighting yards_. the groom was from ver-vassel, and laurent wasn't sure if the misnomer was due to translation or that the groom thought himself far too refined to consider soldiers on the same tier as equestrians. laurent thought the latter might have been insufferably obnoxious, but mostly he was surprised at the question.

he neatened a row of halters where they hung on a post, pouting, voice a little nasty. he did not love the familiarity of tone the groom had assumed with him recently. from some members of the household, it was lovely, but with some too familiar. "why would i go to the training yard?" as in, _why would i tell you where i'm going after this, you nosy prick?_ but damen had kissed him quite a bit that morning after breakfast, so his edge had been dulled slightly.

"the king and your prince are both there. everyone's gonna watch them spar."

laurent did not have to consider whether he would go, only feel a wave of dread that he wasn't there already, even if it hadn't started. he just knew that he could not miss a minute of this contest. his eyes went fat, hand stilled where it was working.

" _yes_ ," he said flatly, as if of course he had known this was going to happen. "let's go."

 _everyone_ was an exaggeration. but there had to be a hundred men at the training yard, where on a normal day, you might find twenty-five. so it was much busier than normal, and laurent didn't recognize every single face as he and michele, the groom, wove through the light crowd. it was always easy to spot the captain of the guards, with his coarse, curly brown hair and brilliant silver spaulders denoting his guardship and his charge—the king's guard wore gold—and the silk ribbons beneath denoting his captaincy even from behind, when one might not see the beacon shine of his station pins on his chests. laurent found jord, always, like a magnet.

jord and huet were engaged in a rather rowdy debate about something, so laurent had the element of surprise on his side, and pulled both of jord's daggers from his hip pockets in a quick yank. " _why_ is it so easy to disarm my captain?" he lamented dramatically, making sure that the men around them noticed. but jord was too quick to wit, and he spun to face his prince, hand on the hilt of his broadsword.

"you're a quick throw," he growled, wily, and it made laurent smile. "but i think i could draw first, and run you through before you got close enough to stab me."

laurent clucked his teeth, and flipped both blades quickly to hand them back to jord, handles-first, the blades newly sharp between his thumbs and forefingers. it was a stupid trick, but sometimes it was nice to show that he had some up his sleeve, especially when among men who didn't care about the rest of the weapons or skills in his arsenal.

"don't kill the men before they get to watch this," he heard over his shoulder. they had arrived just in time, it seemed: both auguste and damen were strolling out of the armory, although laurent saw they did not walk together. auguste had a bit of an edge to his posture, an extra false swagger on top of his already golden confidence. damen had the exact same manner, but when laurent looked to him, his lover did not meet his eyes. "who told you it was happening?" auguste sounded strange, his brow furrowed a little bit in irritation.

laurent stilled beside jord, the hair on the back of his neck standing on end. auguste was bare-chested without a sword belt, but olivér, who had come in at his side, handed him a magnificent long sabre. 

"why wouldn't anyone tell me—" he began, but auguste's expression melted into sweet butter, and cheerily he shrugged.

"no reason!"

damon's sword was achelon, not a sabre but something a bit heavier, although still a rather lightweight weapon. he was not wearing the brass or leather greaves that his guards had. so they were armored for a friendly contest, but armed for something dangerous. suspicious and growing more so by the minute, laurent let himself lean against a column that he could share with jord. he would not throw a tantrum.

in truth, his curiosity was piqued. "why do i feel like this has something to do with me?" he muttered to jord under the corner of his mouth. he saw jord's dimple and scowled.

"not everything has to do with you."

a pause.

"but yeah, this does."

the two fighters met in the center of the yard, and did not share the friendly smiles that they usually exchanged in greeting for one another. laurent just saw the same face on two men: the smirk of someone who had accepted a challenge they were confident they could win. laurent found the heel of his boot tapping compulsively in the sawdust. he did not, he decided, like that this had been intentionally kept from him.

if he had expected a light jaunt, a warmup, or anything remotely resembling friendliness, he had been foolish. at the call of the grand armorer's bell, the fight began, auguste delivering a blinding attack that demanded immediate, nimble footwork from damen. indeed, for a full minute it seemed like damen could not, or would not, riposte, too involved in deflecting auguste's powerful blows. but then the game was on: it became apparent that each fighter studied his opponent differently, auguste with an onslaught of blows meant to reveal tics and weaknesses, and damen with simple defense, watching for the same. laurent could not tear his eyes away, although he could sense, feel that he was not alone: every man had their eyes glued to the pair of first sons.

it was at least a fight broken into bouts, the grand armorer ringing the brass bell on the side of the colonnade, and auguste and damen broke apart, barely winded. quiet conversations broke out in the crowd, and laurent said over them and around his finger, which he was chewing in his mouth unconsciously, "those swords are freshly sharp." an observation and a critique.

jord gave another one of his insolent shrugs. "well, i'd hate to be the armorer who gave either of 'em dull ones." if there was calm left in laurent's gut, this effectively dissolved it, and jord's casual air was infuriating.

at the bell, it was damen this time who lunged, and laurent instinctively grabbed at jord's elbow in panic. what he was afraid of he couldn't know, for if either man sustained wounded flesh or pride, it would not bode well for him. no wonder they hadn't wanted him here. two commanders of great armies, the pictures of fitness and strength, fighting an exhibition with the ferocity that most men would fight for their lives. for laurent, there was not really anyone to root for.

auguste dodged a blow with a stealthy roll, coming up with sawdust on his back, sticking to a light sheen of sweat that had broken out over his ivory skin. but every clever parry or feint in one seemed to inspire the other to outdo him, both of them impossibly graceful given their sizes. meanwhile, every clanging clash of sword to sword jolted laurent's teeth and wedged his heart rather far up in his throat. he was trembling with nervous energy at the end of the second bout, watching auguste where he rest, standing with his hand on his hip, catching his breath. then he saw damen wipe hastily at his brown bicep, smearing blood: auguste had nicked him well. laurent, instinctively, pushed himself off of the column and strode to auguste.

"i think you should _stop this_ ," he whispered menacingly: auguste was looking at the ground, wiping sweat from his forehead, and laurent bent to demand they make eye contact, a very angry snake.

"no." it was so plain and casual that it set laurent's already warm blood to boiling. auguste was standing, going to turn back to signal to the grand armorer that he was ready to resume. laurent blocked his path. "get out of the way, laurent," auguste sighed. he was at the end of his patience, laurent could hear it. he was about to get a very rare reprimanding by his elder brother.

"no! this is a bizarre spectacle. and it is... unbecoming of gentlemen..."

he felt stupid even as he said it, blustering, making things up. if anything, a contest like this was the most honorable spectacle a king could partake in. auguste’s men, damen's men, all adored their commanders for just this: their excellence in a fight.

auguste's voice had an unwelcome edge to it. "get out of the way, laurent," he repeated.

he could practically feel his mother's finger under his chin, tilting it up in defiance. "no! you can't tell me what to do. what are you going to do, run me thro—"

he did not get to finish. auguste's arm was around his waist, lifting him four inches off the ground, and he carried him like that the few feet back to where jord stood, still leaning against the column, now laughing openly. but laurent's captain was quickly chastened. auguste was now impatient. "do not let him up again," auguste commanded, and jord nodded curtly, hooking his arm over laurent's shoulders and holding him in something slightly gentler than a headlock. it took a brave man to restrain laurent when he was visibly seething, watching auguste retreat back to the fight, damen now waiting on him in the center of the yard.

"if anyone bets against either of them," laurent called as the clanging of swords became rhythmic once more, addressing the men around them, "i'll cut off as many toes as coins you put down."

"what if we bet on both?" it was one of his own guards, louis, a young redheaded man who was one of the ones that had come a bit more out of his shell around laurent as of late.

laurent sighed so forcefully it was more akin to a growl. "that is... statistically null. useless." he was reminded why he felt uncomfortable here. soldiers operated, thought on a very uncomplicated level. it was something he envied sometimes.

then auguste drew blood again, and then found his own belly scratched, and laurent thrashed against jord's stubborn arm uselessly in a small tantrum. the wounds were superficial, but it was evidence that just the barest contact could pierce skin. the swords were very, very freshly sharp. there would be no doubt among the men that this was something more wild than a typical exhibition. a misstep, a stumble, any miscalculation and someone's royal entrails could be on the ground.

and yet—laurent found himself watching rapturously. he knew auguste's body, knew his fighting style, which was always awesome, but damen was as exquisite, different in an achelon way. where auguste was sly, damen was bold, and when auguste feinted gracefully, damen was always after him, full of endless energy, as if the fight was providing it rather than draining him of it. and now laurent could see rather plainly how well he could use his body, a coiled spring, in total control over every one of his absurd muscles.

they fought until they were both flinging droplets of sweat into the sawdust. unlike the bouts that usually drew a bit of a crowd in the yard, no one yelled or jeered. when auguste and damen fought, it was silence. the air rippled with the sound of steel on steel, long slings and great clatters. twice, damen disarmed auguste, which shifted the energy in the yard considerably. as if this spurred him on, auguste then did the same. it was incredible to watch their focus increase as they went on, even as laurent knew their bodies were beginning to tire. but it seemed more like six bouts had been a warm-up, where their muscles were still unfurling from sleep and they sacrificed ability for the sheer act of learning each other.

"have they fought each other before?" he murmured out of the corner of his mouth. jord still had his arm around the prince's shoulder but after the first time auguste's sword had slipped out of his hand, laurent had begun to lean on his guard in earnest, tucked beneath his arm for comfort. his thumbnail, which had previously been well-shaped and neat, was now a ragged mess, swollen with spit as he worked on the jagged edges, chewing on the skin when his nail had enough.

"last time the achelon was here," jord nodded. they spoke without looking at one another: there was nowhere to look but the contest. laurent stilled as damen grunted, leaning into auguste's blow with his sword, and the two of them stumbled back from the impact. last time damen had been in arles: seven years ago. when laurent had run headlong into his stomach. damen had seemed so grown then, but now, laurent was older than he had been, and was nearly as wide. watching the fight, laurent felt acutely young. 

on the fifth bout, things began to either unravel or grow tighter, laurent couldn't tell. their showmanship changed: instead of evidence of strength and endurance, both men became more erratic in their fighting, pulling out stops and tricks that laurent knew was showmanship for the true duelers among them, men who viewed swordplay as an art and science rather than a show of physical might. both were dusty on all sides from rolling to avoid blows, and as if the fight energized them, they moved ever faster, feet lightning quick. damen tripped auguste, which garnered roars of disapproval from the men, and auguste, with a medic's precision, swung out and scratched damen's ankle, tip of his sword slicing through the leather of his sandals and leaving him half barefooted, stumbling to discard the now ruined shoe.

by the seventh bout damen was fully barefoot, and laurent was sat on an overturned box, elbows propped on his knees and his thumbnail, mangled now, in his mouth. every time either man took a blow or narrowly dodged one, jord would lay his head on the top of laurent's head in a reassuring pat, but he didn't need to restrain the prince. as anxious as laurent might have been, as hunched and tight his shoulders, watching his brother and lover fight with such intensity and abject perfection was an indulgence. if one appreciated skilled and artful fighters, high-end weaponry, palpable rivalry or just the sight of two handsome men in the midst of physical exertion, there was something worth watching here, and frankly, laurent liked all four. he had the added fascination of loving both men and knowing that, beyond the rivalry of skill, there was something more deeply personal going on here. this was no argument or settling of an insult, but this was also no casual scrimmage. no hatred, but no play either. it made the fight ever more frightening: he wondered how a victor would be crowned.

by the pause between the ninth and tenth, laurent had let his suspenders slip over each shoulder, and his palms had rubbed together so much that the sticky molasses from the grain he'd been throwing for the horses had balled up and was now only in the dark crescents under his nails. he watched the fight like he had his whole inheritance on the line, and he would lose it no matter who won: he wasn't sure what outcome he was most afraid of. so when the fighters separated, laurent stood and, with a tentative glance at jord, beckoned damen over.

auguste looked peeved, but damen, who had been defying him for an hour now, raised a hand to cut off his objection, and listened to the _correct_ brother. he was soaked through with sweat, and laurent could feel heat radiating off of him even from two paces away. despite that, laurent tucked rather close to him.

"are you alright?" was all he could think to say: he didn't know why he had summoned damen over. perhaps it was just to see if he had any sway with either of these men anymore.

damen didn't look nearly as irritated as auguste had upon laurent's earlier interruption, but then, neither looked like they had much fight left in them. "i'm fine. are you worried for me?"

laurent watched damen flexing his hands in front of him, between them, and laurent saw that in doing so, he was hiding it from auguste: glancing down, he saw a spot of blood or two among the hand bandages that men wore during difficult drills. laurent, instinctively, covered damen's hands with his own: anyone might have seen it as a gesture of affection and worry, rather than what it was—an acknowledgement that damen was hiding a wound.

"i'm suspicious. you don't have to do this, whatever it is."

from afar, auguste's voice projected like a cannon boom: "you can't coach him!" it took laurent a moment to realize that he was talking to him.

he paled, and looked forcibly at damen, who made the grave error of looking pityingly back at laurent. "you wouldn't understand," he whispered, and his tone was so patronizing that laurent shuddered, withdrawing his hands like he'd been burned.

"he has BLISTERS on his palms," he spat across the yard to auguste, holding his hands up in the air illustratively, and then, marching back to his overturned box, he snapped at damen, "and _he_ is not actually ambidextrous. push him harder on the left." he would coach anyone he pleased, although jord gripped his shoulders tight when he sat back down, fuming like a child who had been put into time out.

as laurent suspected, both men were horribly dependent on him, and both took advantage of the weaknesses he'd pointed out as soon as the sparring started again. it made them both more vicious with one another, however, which made laurent's face screw up—he had not foreseen that inevitability. they fought scrappily, exhaustion on every line in their faces and muscle on their backs. auguste, targeting damen's tender grip with a teeth-chattering slam of his sword against damen's, sent the weapon flying, and had his own blade at damen's throat. but damen's hands were his only weak spot, and he dove for his sword, barely rolling out of the way before auguste's slammed against the ground where he'd been laying. it would have been a fatal blow, without question, and it seemed as if jord was as on edge as laurent: while laurent laid his head against jord's side, he felt his captain's hand cup his skull like he was worried he would have to restrain laurent for something other than his obstinate nature.

sobered by the disarming, damen's dark brow set, and it took him just minutes to return the favor, auguste suddenly stumbling, sword skidding over the ground. but as damen went for the attack, auguste was too quick, and grabbed him by the wrist with both hands. desperate but effective, he squeezed hard enough for damen to hiss in pain and drop his weapon.

the problem was, as soon as he'd disarmed damen, he loosened his grip, and in a moment damen had his elbow around auguste's throat, pulling him into a headlock. with the king's broad shoulders, it only took a moment of struggling for him to dislodge damen's grip, and with a well-timed hook of his leg and what looked to be the last ounce of strength he could wring from his body, he threw damen to the ground.

unarmed, laurent wondered if they would simply devolve into fighting with their fists, but auguste had technically won. the honorable thing would be to extend a hand and help damen up, knowing that the fight was over, winning like a gentleman. but the very opposite happened. auguste raised his palms in surrender, and called to the gathered crowd, "i yield."

exhausted, damen rolled over and pushed himself to his feet, both men gathering their cast-off swords and making their way, clearly in pain from the physical toil of the fight, back across the yard to the armory. confusion settled awkwardly over the crowd: they had similarly not expected such a strange conclusion.

holding jord by the forearm, laurent peeled off after both fighters into the armory. it was a vast room that spanned the length of the yard, and was of course just the home for the tools of the royal guards: a wall of shields, checkered in blue, emblazoned with great starbursts that flashed in the slats of sunshine that spilled in through the skylights. three hundred cannons, piles of thousands of brand-new arrows neatly stacked in bundles on long wooden shelves, great spools of linen bowstring. they were a well-equipped guard, wanting for nothing. the far east wall of the armory had always been a medic station of sorts, with a long wooden table stocked with dressings, bandages and tinctures, a massive jar of honey fresh from the apiary.

damen and auguste sat side-by-side on the long bench, albeit with six or seven feet between them. pascal attended to auguste's scrapes, olivér giving him water, and damen was similarly well-attended by another physician and nikandros. laurent wanted to kneel in front of one of them, touch his cheek, scold him sweetly for such a stupid endeavor. but he did not know which he wanted to kneel before more. he also wanted very much to hit one of them across the face with a glove, and he did not know which one he wanted to hit more. so he just stood, releasing his grasp on his guard's wrist suddenly, having forgotten that he had been clinging to jord white-knuckled.

"that was ridiculous," he spat. neither man looked at him, which lit him on fire. "what was the purpose of that? was it just a show of pride and stubbornness? are those the makings of great kings?" in response to the silence, he strode forward and seized damen's sword from where he'd leaned it against the bench: nikandros stilled momentarily, casting laurent a sideways glance that seemed to flash something wholly unexpected. understanding, perhaps? it was not the wariness of a man who felt threatened, that was certain. it was familiar.

laurent hefted the sword in his hand, the hilt hot to the touch from the prolonged wrap of damen's palm, and he ran his thumb over the edge of it, hearing damen inhale as if to speak in protest. even after twelve rounds of fighting, after all those blows, it had not dulled. he watched the blood come easily from his finger and then looked forcefully at damen, who was a churning mix of determination and sheepishness. giving himself the little wound had hurt a great deal more than he wanted to let on, so laurent just let the singing pain erupt in his poisonous voice. "children should not be given weapons like this to play with. these are tools for killing, not for an exhibition. how sharp was this when you began? newly forged?"

auguste, visibly exhausted with his brother's little tirade, raised his head and groaned dramatically. he sat up straighter so that paschal could more easily access the slice below his navel, which didn't bleed heavily but would have, could have been a fatal blow if damen's sword had sunk even a half-inch further in. "would you have had us fight with wooden swords?" he snapped, staring at laurent defiantly, as if a king needed to defy anyone. but laurent would show no obedience. auguste took a long draught of water from a bronze goblet and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. "they would not have brought us a resolution."

"and this has? there was _no victor_. nobody knows what that was!"

"he can protect you as well as i can," auguste grunted. "we've seen that now."

realization dawned on laurent, and he felt his overripe blood go cold in his veins. it was a niggling suspicion that had been slinking around in the back of his mind, but he had not wanted to acknowledge it, even if subconsciously, he had been rather certain all along. this had reeked of something more than a casual contest between old friends. in a fit, laurent flung the sword to the paving tiles, where it filled the hall with a clatter of bangs that echoed through the tall rafters.

"what if one of you had died? or maimed the other? what happiness would that have brought me?" he seethed, could feel himself approaching the edge of hysteria. "who would have protected me then?"

"whoever survived," auguste said, as if it were the simplest thing in the world.

laurent's vision went black for a moment. "physically?" he barked, "that's what you're worried about? who can fend off attackers? is that what you think _i_ need protection from?"

the atmosphere in the room changed: everyone knew they had brushed against the side of a like a painful rumor like a ship touching an ice float. even the achelons, who weren't privvy to the gossip that had once floated around aimeric's poor face, knew that laurent bore some kind of invisible scars. he'd told damen as much when he'd confessed, even briefly, his fear of intimacy. it didn't take much cleverness to make deductions or trade rumors with the veretian guardsmen.

"idiots. i don't need a bodyguard. jord protects me better than either of you ever could, at that and everything else. and i have been in danger enough times on my own, without him, and have had to protect myself. this was an excuse for the two of you to fight for my honor, but i dictate my honor, and when it is offended, i doubt your violence will be as effective as mine in restoring it. " his voice was low now, gaze pivoting from auguste to damen and back again. "you two only think in battles and duels. myopic." he was furious, shaking with it. it was jord who had protected laurent from his uncle in the end, jord who tended to his sadness, who was by his side when auguste was occupied with things more important than laurent. as if he needed a brute with a sword to protect him. 

this time, to laurent's amazement, it was damen who had the nerve to talk back. perhaps all of the kissing had made him too comfortable. "that is the way of the world, laurent." like auguste, he had a condescending air to his words, as if he were exasperated with the effort of explaining something to a child.

"it is the way of a world that you both have vowed to leave behind. a world of peace between kingdoms is a world of politics. and in that world, i will protect _you both_. no need to thank me. it is clearly the cost of loving the two of you." 

he was answered with only quiet, which was without question the safest course of action for all involved: it seemed both men knew that further argument would do nothing but alienate them from this furious silver snake in front of them. laurent pressed his thumb and forefinger to his eyelids, staring hard at the universe in the dark of his mind, trying hard to collect himself.

"paschal," he finally called, defeated, "do not subject me to looking at foolish, ugly scars for the rest of my days. fix them both."

"your highness," the physician responded with a tone of amusement in his voice, "they will both be handsome as ever once they've healed."

—————

****

**TEN** days was all it took, in hindsight. ten days of being shown what he might shy at. he had stopped them more than once: in the stables, when damen had gone to kneel after what felt like an hour of kissing, laurent panicked and begged him not to. "no one's ever—not here—i, i don't—" and again, one night, when damen had tangled his fingers in laurent's hair too tightly and narrowly avoided being decapitated with a candelabra. that time, laurent had seen a new realization dawn on his suitor's face: perhaps he hadn't really believed that too much virility could push laurent to violence. laurent had simply growled, "don't pull my hair," and damen had nodded, gently prying the candlestick from laurent's fingers: "never again."

he was as reliable as the sunrise, laurent found. when it came to these intimate moments, it seemed like damen couldn't feel frustration or insult. he never took a rejection personally, never seemed to feel jilted or stymied, even when laurent knew, could feel that he'd left damen wanting much, much more than what he had given him.

perhaps something was just different that night. there was chalis in the dining room and fog coating the city, creeping in through the loggias, changing the acoustics in the hallways as servants moved slowly through the palace, shuttering windows to avoid the chill seeping in while everyone slept.

dinner had been contentious, tension rippling in the air like heat over paving stones, although perhaps it had all of it been emanating from laurent: damen and auguste had settled whatever business they'd had in the yard, and both seemed happy and relaxed in the afterglow of a good spar. liesel was the only one who seemed as unamused as laurent, and they sat side-by-side when the cherry dessert wine was brought out so that they could more easily disparage their thick-skulled fighters behind beautiful scowls.

a harp had played until midnight, at which point the harpist retired, and guests began to trickle out. only when the room had emptied of everyone except laurent and, across the table from him, damen, did he rise, stretching his arms behind him with a pop of his shoulders. "are you tired from your little show today?" he quipped, and damen leaned back in his chair, swirling his wine in his goblet. he did not regard laurent in the cheeky, adoring way that he often did when laurent chastised him. there was something else on his face. a challenge. perhaps he was not done fighting?

"no," he shrugged, tossing his head back to polish off the remnants of his cup.

there had been something to watching that fight. between the moments of panic, laurent had been enthralled. he was no soldier, but he knew how it felt to be in the thick of danger, avoiding it only with one's own cunning and grace and strength and speed. it was addictive, to feel so excellent. he could see it ringing in damen for the first time, and knew that damen had seen it many times over already in laurent. so up went laurent's chin, and he considered damen and his arrogant glow. "come, then."

they were the only activity in the royal apartments: everyone else had retired, just the gentle glow of lamplight visible beneath the door to the king's quarters evidence that someone might have been awake inside, guards at their posts playing dominos or trading whispered jokes. it was quiet enough that laurent didn't see any reason that he shouldn't just lead damen through the silent palace by the hand, their pace lazy, damen slowing them down every time he gave laurent's hand a little tug and twirled him back into a stolen kiss.

not that he needed to, but he didn't care about pretenses. he might have, had jord been on duty, but it just... didn't matter. he didn't care what anyone might have thought, seeing him drag his suitor by the hand into his chambers well past midnight. nothing mattered. the world felt ripe and upside down. damen, too, seemed changed. he was still letting laurent lead in all things, but there was an eagerness to him that made laurent feel pleasantly tense.

they didn't make it much further than just inside the door before damen was taking welcome liberties, his touches like suggestions: _we could do this, or that, or maybe this, or whatever you like, my love,_ but with a heat that said, too, _you've seen how i'd fight for it_. laurent offered his throat, and damen kissed it. he offered his tongue, and damen took it. they were waters that had now become almost familiar, shallow and warm. but there, in the deep, was that current, the one that was often so impossible for laurent to feel. now it was beginning to tug at him, growing stronger, and laurent was tired. he wanted to let go and be pulled under. 

"tell me what's next," he whispered, depositing the words against the bow of damen's top lip. his fingers, white as bone, had long since disappeared into the thick copse of curls on damen's head, holding him close.

"on our list of very spooky things?" it was a sweet way to put it, which felt at odds with the way damen _said_ it, gravelly and warm. laurent could feel a broad hand on his waist against his jacket and another come up to stroke to and fro against his wrist. "you know we've crossed most of it off."

laurent knew. he knew what they'd crossed off and would never forget it: the kiss in the garden and every kiss since, damen's hands on his waist, his thigh. there was only so much one could do behind a wall of clothes. it was time to take them off.

to go from being fingers-deep into damen's warm curls to unlashing the fine silk cord that laced his jacket was like getting out of bed on a cold morning. damen just watched, studious, as laurent focused on the task, which was complex even for a native veretian. he worked from eyelet to eyelet, wrapping the cord neatly around his fingers so that it might not get lost, and he could tuck it into the piece's pocket for safe keeping. " _armor's_ easier to get off," damen murmured, as incredulous as he was clearly hypnotized.

laurent began to shrug his jacket off, untying the bow at his throat where his shirt was done up. "ease of removal is not the priority for clothing in vere. unlike in achelos."

damen smiled, tight-lipped and sly, which laurent decided he very much liked when it was directed at him. as if taunted by the veretian way that laurent spoke his country's name, he switched to achelon, which laurent liked as much as the smile. "all the more reason to get you to ios." a mop of wavy gold hair glowed in laurent's mind, only to dim when damen was kissing him again, palms on top of and then up beneath laurent's shirt, splaying on his belly, gently possessive.

after the jacket, things became rather less complicated. boots were easy, laurent could kick them off like second nature. the longer they kissed, making slow progress across the room, the more that everything seemed to be a nuisance, weeds to be cleared hastily, hiccups in the progression of a lion growing inside of laurent's stomach. his heels hit the lip of his bed's platform and cautiously, he released his death grip on damen's neck, sinking until he was sat on the edge of the bed.

he felt a little young and stupid. he should not have sat, he thought, because it felt subservient in a way that curdled his blood. but always ready, forever reliable, damen knelt when he might done a hundred more domineering things, where most men would have. instead, he was now eye-level with laurent's belly, looking up at him with sweet sincerity. "i want to do the rest," he said in sun-soaked veretian, and laurent nodded because he knew damen was asking for permission.

his breeches, soft wool, were easily pulled apart once unlaced, although the trickery of the findings slowed damen down considerably. and when laurent arched up, wriggling, so that damen could shuck them to the floor, he caught his lover staring.

he followed damen's eyes to his own calf: the pure white stocking that ended just above his knee with a neat lick of leather holding them in place. this was not something worn in achelos. stockings were a northern accessory, and silk ones this fine were a special new collaboration between kemptian silkmasters and veretian seamstresses.

"do you know what to do with them?" laurent whispered, a little condescending, feeling a kind of funny grip on his stomach, like it was being squeezed in someone's fist. damen's hands came down to grasp his ankle, and to palm up the curve of laurent's calf, reverent and studious. the grip on laurent's stomach wrenched tighter.

"i think i can figure it out." there was bright humor in damen's words, but the brilliance of a joke was muted by the depth of his voice and the look on his face: his eyes were nearly black in the candlelight, obscured by the shadows and by his dark lashes, but his lips were parted. it was the look of a man drunk on what he was holding, a priceless jewel, a sharp rapier.

damen was very clever, but it did not take much cleverness to deduce the mechanism behind a pair of stockings. laurent felt damen's fingers brush the curve of his knee and one, two, three inches higher, til they found the slender leather garter that held the stocking in place. it was a simple belt and worked like one: when damen pulled to release the strap from its buckle, the whole thing grew tighter for a moment, ad laurent's eyes moved between the look on damen's face and the way the meat of his thigh yielded to the pressure.

"you are a man of infinite resourcefulness," laurent breathed, and this quip he was able to deliver with the proper indicators of a joke: a smile, his teeth clasped around his bottom lip. "they are _such_ complicated components."

damen sighed, and pulled the undone garter from laurent's thigh like it physically pained him to do so. "it was a conundrum," he admitted, breath startlingly warm against the inside of laurent's knee: he was leaning down in increments, and laurent saw his lips growing closer and closer to the imprint in the silk where the garter had been pressed all evening. "i couldn't decide whether i wanted to take them off, or if i wanted to fuck you with them still on." he had suddenly switched again to achelon, laurent noted blindly, and the breathy vowels just served to warm his thigh further. what a horribly vulgar thing to say: laurent loved it. the stocking shifted as damen hooked his fingers around the top seam and began to tug it down, just over the crest of his knee, and when laurent felt lips, warm and honeyed on the top of his thigh, he realized that this would be a contest of who could continue to crack wise as they hurtled towards the impossibility of complex thought. 

"you may do both." laurent was flustered, but he managed to counter damen cooly: who would continue to talk about sex matter-of-factly, and who might cave to the hedonism of it all? "i will have to put another pair on tomorrow. and the next day. and the next. so you can try both ways, and see which one you like best." from this angle, part of damen's handsome, dark face was obscured by the soft white of laurent's shirt, so that the only way he could predict damen's true location was the feel of his mouth on laurent's thigh. as if it might help anchor him further, laurent reached out to touch the crown of damen's head, his thick, loose curls rough from a summer in the sunshine but soft all the same. "can you guess how many colors i have?"

later he would consider who had given in first: laurent, who at that moment immediately stopped speaking and simply gasped, or damen, who had apparently deserted the conversation several moments prior? it was the only way damen would have had time to plan to swing laurent's legs over his shoulders so cannily. laurent, from the push of it, was jarred off of his elbow, shoulder blades hitting the brocade, and every inch damen’s mouth ventured higher between his legs, the further back he was forced to lie, first his knees draped over damen's shoulders, then his thighs, then he felt something so base and delicious and warm that he could remember nothing, later, but the defeated sound he made and the digging of damen's fingertips into the outer flesh of his thigh, and freezing with surprise at the touch of a tongue where he had not, in his wildest dreams, imagined it. the light went out in his head again.

this time, when they were lit once more, there were no bloody household weapons, and nothing had changed. he had lost maybe a second or five, and his eyelids only fluttered open because damen's lips had deserted their hypnotic post and were now migrating north, breathing damp against his hip and his ribs, laurent’s shirt being rucked higher and higher until he had no choice but to wriggle his way out of it. damen had his broad palm on laurent's only remaining article of clothing: the single stocking on his left foot. it felt somehow more ceremonial than the breeches, although it exposed so much less. it was just the keystone, the last piece.

looking up at damen kneeling on the bed between his legs, he felt an unpleasant wave of dizziness come over him. his leg was placed gingerly down on the bed, still bestockinged, and he watched as damen unclasped the pin at his own shoulder, the fine white linen of his chiton slipping to his waist. the nicks that he'd sustained earlier with auguste had been treated with honey-lined dressings, which was exactly what he'd demanded. now, the bandages just served to make his skin look richer: even as his head dropped and he moved to untie the knot at his waist, which was _his_ keystone, and as he went from half-naked to considerably more than half, the white dressings were still stark against his tan. laurent watched all the while, the wariness that had passed over him steaming away from the heat in his cheeks. what an absurd way to look, he thought, dense and broad and barrel-chested and vascular and—

damen reached forward, and laurent held his breath, but did not anticipate damen simply depositing the golden pin from his shoulder onto laurent's stomach. it was warm from sitting so close to damen's skin all evening, but the weight and curiousness of it still made laurent suck in his breath. a little hesitantly, he went to pick it up, turning it in his fingers. it was a recumbent lion, laying casually with its head erect: the symbol of the achelon royal family, but in a rather relaxed posture. laurent couldn't help the upward twitch of his lips. it was, plainly, damen in the form of a big cat.

"a token of your first conquest," damen murmured, and as laurent glanced from the pin to the man who'd gifted it to him, he saw that damen was smiling in that familiar, adoring way. it was such a silly, gentle gesture, and yet laurent's heart felt like it had a sudden heaviness to it, pressing down against his back and anchoring him to the bed. there was no more dizziness: he was grounded.

he placed the pin reverently on the small chest beside the bed to treasure later. it was warm and golden just like damen, but it could offer him little more than a swoon, and damen was ready, waiting patiently, to offer him more. he felt the ghost of a fingertip beneath his chin and raised it proudly in time with his foot, which he presented rather expectantly. "are you going to just leave that one on?" as if he liked being bossed around, which laurent was beginning to think perhaps might have been the case, damen acquiesced, and when he palmed laurent's calf it was with such an intimacy that it knocked the breath from laurent's chest.

"tell me what colors you have."

he knew that damen didn't care. it was a distraction technique: that became apparent enough when damen began to close the gap between them, dipping down to press his mouth reverently to laurent's neck. but laurent was grateful for the trick. he could focus on that task, and on tracing his finger over the dressing wrapped neatly around damen's bicep.

"white," he began, and it felt a little like steeling himself for a fight. he wondered how soldiers could do it, to look forward to something that would likely be painful, to dive into violence with a wild grin on their face. he focused only on the slightly fraying edge of the white cotton bandage, letting damen touch him. it was a familiar technique, a self-imposed hypnosis that he had developed long ago. pick anything close by and focus on it, lock his mind on it. think about the weave of the drapes, the fringe of the cushions. think about the fingers that made them, the technique, the craft, the materials. it helped to center himself around something other than the pain, and it had worked until his uncle had grown tired of fucking a mute corpse and begun dosing laurent’s drinks to force his physical interest. but for a while, it had been a good tool. he could only vaguely register damen seeming mildly busy with something. "all shades of light blue." he thought of the drawers in his dressing room where they lived, neatly stacked in a rainbow. "from ice to sky, and deeper to cobalt, and midnight. kemptian violet and lavender. _oh_."

he had been bracing for something rude, a sensation exacted by someone who didn't care for his actual pleasure, foggy memories of grinding teeth. but what the way damen touched him now was so easy, a mellow, inching finger that pressed into laurent like someone slipping through a barely-open door. how long had they both been breathing this way, like they'd run up the icy side of a mountain? he could feel damen's eyes studying his reactions and couldn't meet them. it was one too many things to focus on. the wanting came easily now, not fabricated by a drug but a natural ebb and flow from laurent's stomach. he shifted, not away but into the feeling, and heard damen's breath hitch.

"bright yellow." he forged ahead and found in his voice something strange. it was a tone that he'd heard before but only falsified, a pet overheard mewling coquettish to their master, doing their best impression of a coy, wanton lover ready to submit to pleasure. laurent didn't realize it was an impression of something real, or that it was a tone that could come so naturally to him. not knowing himself, he instinctively grasped at the back of damen's warm neck to anchor himself again, to know where he was. "tawny, like the color of a fresh egg. black." his language shifted from his native tongue to damen's. "blood red, akielon red." 

it was impossible to laurent that the man above him was the same who he'd watched fight earlier. his fingers had the delicacy of a seamstress, and he worked in slow motion. only the focus was the same: laurent's recitation of colors was for his own benefit, anyway, but damen only seemed to hear once laurent switched languages, depositing a dreamy sigh against laurent's jaw. they were kissing, then, damen's arm wedged between them like a barricade, and with his mind only working at half capacity, laurent thought dumbly: it felt very, very good when it was wet, when everything was wet. but then he felt his stomach hit his spine, and he gasped, hearing his ankle crack where he flexed it instinctively against damen's side, a jolt rattling through him. if he hadn't been drunk off of this, he might have felt foolish asking: "what was that?"

he felt rather than saw damen smile, felt it against his lips and heard it in the sweet breath of laughter that he'd incited. "that," damen breathed, and laurent could feel and hear the smugness, too, "is my new favorite place to be."

in a fragmented, unwell part of his mind, laurent could remember something like this. a rotten version, memory twisted by the drug. he remembered wanting, although it was not thus. he remembered pleasure, although it was not thus. this was bliss, when he could allow himself to be swept away and felt and touched, and that had been... a starving man did not enjoy the taste of his first meal in weeks. he just ate because his reptile brain told him that without it, he would die. for the starving, food was survival, not a luxury to be savored. that had how it had been to be drugged, ravenous for an end to the pressure and hunger, scrambling towards the light at the end of a tunnel. but this—this was torches in the tunnel, and the tunnel was a hallway of red and gold, lined in doors that led to rooms overflowing with pleasures, with damen's warm hand leading him through the first of many.

his breathing was growing more distressed, and the more damen coaxed him, his exhales began to be interspersed with monosyllabic sounds, quiet and just for the two of them. the very particular feeling of a fever bloomed in him, rolling waves of hot and cold. he was sweating, he knew, could feel it on his lower back and his throat, even though every one of their movements was minuscule, bodies shifting in inches at most. they could have stayed just like that, laurent knew, the cold, logical part of his mind telling him that this was just fine, this was enough. but the voice was quiet and cool like it always was. the thrumming of laurent's pulse drowned it out.

"more." he wanted to live inside this, to build a palace out of it, with a great training yard where damen could use his body to fight and then use it for _this_. he was shot through with envy for the stupid sharp sword damen had used that day, and envy for any weapon damen had ever held. what an existence: to amplify and protect him, to feel him thrum with excellence and power and glee. "more, i want more." the words tumbled out of his mouth into damen's. and then it was too late. he'd jumped off the side of a cliff and there was nothing to do now but enjoy the feeling of free-falling. damen pushing inside him was like slamming into the ice cold water, sharp and painful and electrifying.

pushing past the rubble was hard work. it hurt to do it, to force himself to shed the panic that enshrouded him the second he felt the pressure. terror, nausea, it was just there, clawing at him, but then damen made a sound and laurent couldn't help thinking how silly it was that a moan was all it took. a moan and a sweet smile that he couldn't see but could feel against his lips. he hitched his thighs higher up damen's waist and let himself feel all the goodness that the sword might have felt.

damen's exhaustion was obvious: he was running on borrowed energy, but that was all laurent wanted. a subdued something, a shift of hips that stayed subtle. it was not the kind he'd felt before, which was what he craved: something different in every way, a different touch, a different act, a different result. he got them all. the shudder that had run through him, coaxed by damen's finger, was multiplied by a thousand now, pleasure coming in rolling stabs, he could, eventually, only focus on the sound of his own breath, the way he panted against damen's open mouth, their foreheads pressed together, and the way his body felt: like it had never been touched before, completely new.

—————

****

**DAWN** hit him square in the face, infiltrating the tiniest gap in the drapes around his bed. with a sound of protect, he sat up to seal it shut, and he felt a strangeness in the balance of his featherbed. thoughtfully, he gave a little hum, and looked over his shoulder. it had not been a strange dream, then: damen was face-down in a fringed cushion, his broad back exposed from the top rib up, fit shoulders dense in their relaxation. he was sleeping soundly, every few breaths coming in a sweet snuffle, tentatively on the acceptable side of snoring. laurent breathed deep and sharp through his nose.

there had been a strange dream, though, and he went to glance down at his forearms, turning his palms to study both sides of each curiously. no marks, save for the freckle on his left wrist. but in his dream, he had experienced the painless peeling away of his flesh. someone had been flaying him with a sharp knife, stripping him of his skin, but beyond the blood, a new layer of flesh had appeared, as if he were an onion. he had been standing on the platform in his dressing room, and watched this work be done placidly in the looking glass. but damen had not been in it, and what they had done before sleep took him was real, laurent knew. he could feel it in his bones. it felt like someone had reinforced them all with steel plates, all of his joints aching whenever he shifted. it reminded him of the painful days of fourteen and fifteen, when he seemed to grow an inch a month and peppered his development with some very bad falls from the horses.

it all felt like it was on the other side of a crevasse. it felt like everything he knew or had seen was there, over there, with no bridge and no hope of jumping. how had he gotten here, to this side, that was empty and blank and plain? when he looked across the chasm, there was all the chaos and misery and happiness of _before_. what _after_ might feel like, he had never thought about, because he had never thought the event itself could be as it had been.

he looked up around the dark canopy of the bed, the strips of green and blue brocade fringed in gold, details difficult to make out in the darkness, now that he'd banished the sliver of sunshine from their den. where his own skin still sat stark against the dark covers, damen seemed to almost disappear into them. a bit like a child watching a dark corner at night, afraid of monsters, laurent shifted to lay on his side, tucking the covers beneath his chin, staring at the soft mound of damen's curls. he had four days left in this place. he laid there, eyes wide open, until they collapsed in sleep.

—————

****

**"TWELVE** pairs spur straps in kidskin, six pair in calfskin, for a total of thirty-six straps. twelve pairs riding gloves in kidskin, six pair in calfskin, for a total of thirty-six gloves. are these—have you people ever even seen a horse before?" 

laurent stood in his apartments, in the great sitting room, which was flocked with servants and carpeted in vast blue and gold trunks emblazoned with the brothers' starburst with laurent's royal cipher inlaid atop it. he read the long list aloud with authority. thrice now something had been noted as forgotten, and he was growing impatient.

"is it truly my responsibility to facilitate communication between my household and my stable? i'm to be a page as well as a prince?" he snapped at a maid, who was trying her hardest to rifle through a trunk without ruining the fine folding that had been done. wrinkled breeches would only be slightly less irritating to the prince than missing ones.

"no, your highness," said a steward, who tapped two anxious looking squires to run to the stables. "but we were operating on the assumption that your highness' personal effects for riding, in which we included his spur straps, might be included with his tack—"

laurent raised his hand for silence. it was trembling. "i don't _care_ ," he shouted, and the maid's digging in the trunk became much quieter. "you are packing as if i'm off to patras. i am not. this trip is different."

if he'd looked, he might have seen the clear confusion on the steward's face, the way he glanced sidelong at some of his staff, as if he were looking for confirmation: were they puzzled, too, by the prince's behavior, by his statement?

"your highness, indeed not, you are taking... six ships. your visit to patras three wagons. we are aware of the scale, the..." he blustered for a few moments, clearly cycling through ways to express himself that wouldn't get him whipped. laurent glared at him, eager to see if he made a misstep. "the potential," the steward landed on, speaking with his hands in wide sweeps of gracious hand-clasping, "for the malleable duration of this journey for your highness."

laurent threw the list onto the floor, parchment fluttering and folding in on itself on the ornate carpet. "it takes three days to sail between arles and ios." he pinched the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger, closing his eyes against the room. he heard a peep in his periphery. "found them!" the maid had fished a wooden box of spur straps out of the bottom of the trunk, but her small smile was short-lived as she realized the prince didn't care. instead, he turned toward the steward, approaching him with slow, purposeful strides, rubbing at his eyes. by the time he stopped, they were nearly nose-to-nose, and laurent heaved a great sigh. "do you think that the rigor of this preparation is really because i'm worried about _running out_ of something? that they lack kids and calves in achelos from which to tan straps and gloves?"

he searched the steward's face for an answer to his question, for some spark of understanding, but the man simply looked more confused than before. uninterested in waiting for him to play catch-up any longer, laurent waved him away with a flick of his hand: he was blocking the door.

"pack my things correctly. i will find a more competent head of household once i arrive." and with a roll of his eyes, he excused himself abruptly, leaving the servants to scramble in his absence. 

once in the hallway, he could deal with his blindness. he shivered as if he'd fallen into a frozen lake, stumbling as he took a step. his chest had been crushed, surely, or he was in a nightmare where he couldn't breathe: he pinched himself on the thigh to eliminate the possibility. the pain didn't rouse him from any slumber but it did help him blink himself back to the corridor, long and void with its checkerboard marble floor. he began to walk down it, then began to stride, and then was sprinting, boots hitting the marble with great cracks. the guards didn't stop him when he found his destination, but he did leave them muttering in confusion when he'd passed them through the door they were posted at.

breathing hard, he looked around the room he'd run to. it was a symphony of sage and platinum, jade marble floors and silver velvet settees, fragrant flowers in massive vases. a phalène, copper and white, came trotting over to him with its little quicksilver legs, a pug several feet behind it, lazier and fatter. they had deserted their mistress in favor of this new intruder.

"laurent," his mother said, a little startled. she sat at her great desk, overseeing the household ledger, the secretary of the treasurer standing politely at her shoulder. she stared at her son for a moment, then dismissed the secretary wordlessly with the mirror image of the gesture laurent had used in his own apartment. "leave us. we will continue later."

as soon as the door closed behind the secretary, in a rather ignoble way, laurent collapsed onto the floor, his long legs buckling and folding beneath him as he sat. the pug approached him and did not struggle when he snatched it up, clinging it to his breast and burying his nose into the thick folds of its black neck. he stared at the floor, waiting for his mother to speak. reliably, she set her quill down and pushed back from her desk. she was dressed casually in a mantua of black taffeta, her white-gold hair tied up with a black ribbon, and she swished when she walked in stocking feet to laurent's side.

"what has gotten you into this state?" she asked, her fingertips brushing the wave of laurent's hair, and he sighed deeply, adjusting his hold on the little dog, which snorted when it breathed and wore a collar of yellow sapphires.

laurent screwed up his face, squeezing his eyes closed and pointing his nose towards the ceiling. took a breath, went to speak, paused, resumed: "what if i don't want to go to ios?"

"oh, laurent." his mother could be impatient with him, exasperated, or wildly irritated with him depending on how difficult he was being, but this sigh of exhaustion was just one of relief and pity. she bent down, pressed a kiss to his forehead, and stole the black pug from his arms, which forced him to meet her gaze. "come sit with me. we can share a fresh plum."

she sat; he lay, with his head in her lap, legs hanging well off the end of the chaise. she carded her fingers through his hair like a delicate comb; he twisted his signet ring on his pinky idly. "tell me why you wouldn't want to go," she said gently.

his words came easy: he had been maybe waiting to make this confession, but was surprised at his own eloquence, as if a part of his subconscious was speaking without his permission. "i'm afraid that i won't be able to make the plan work. i'm afraid everyone will hate me, as nikandros does. i'm afraid of the heat. i'm afraid of how much they hated father, and whether they will just see him when they look at me. i'm afraid, because auguste is sending me with fifty men, which is a battalion, not an honor guard. he is afraid, too, then. and he can't go with me, and you can't go with me, and i'm afraid of how i feel about the prince. and i'm afraid of the voyage, because ships make me so ill, and i'm afraid of ios, and i'm afraid of sharks." there were other things, but the prescient list at least had been exhausted.

"now," went his mother, "tell me why you would want to go."

his eyes closed, laurent thought. there was a calm quality to his mother's words, the stroking of his hair that asked him to pause and consider his answer, so he did.

"i... auguste has done so much for me. he wouldn't have done it if he didn't believe in me. and i'm afraid that i might swim after his ship if damen leaves without me."

she inhaled audibly through her lovely nose. she smelled today like neroli, which she would have daubed behind her wrists and at her collarbone. sometimes he thought it a shame that she could not remarry without losing her title as queen mother. she was still so beautiful and so elegant.

"jord will be with you," she said warmly, and if she had meant it as a reassurance, it worked in spades: laurent let himself think of that for a moment. there had not been much that jord hadn't been able to protect him from. "and your horses, and grooms. your entire guard and much of auguste's, too. and your achelon philosopher. i know," she sighed, "that your brother's plan is... unusual. but it asks only that you use the gifts that come most naturally to you: your wit and clever mind, your beauty, your birth. there is no question in either of our minds that you are capable."

there was no response that came naturally to laurent, so he simply laid there, fiddling with his ring. it was not so stunning that his mother continued after a long silence, but it was what she said that had laurent's eyes fluttering open.

"you are a child, my sweet boy. just a child. how long ago was it that you were learning to walk with your father? i will never forgive myself for what you saw in marlas. you should not have borne that loss by yourself, been the only one to hear your father's last words." it was not that they'd never spoken of it, but rather that he had only seen veiled glimpses of his mother's grief since his father's funeral. she had sewn herself up, strong and gracious, so that she might be the pillar that her sons needed. but laurent had not forgotten that she had lost more than they had that day.

"was it frightening, to come to arles for the first time?" again, he pictured her as a beautiful girl, hair falling down her back in white waves the way leisel's had at her wedding day.

"my love. you cannot imagine," she breathed. "but now, what is visby to me? a place i lived long ago."

even when they were sharing their plum later, laurent did not feel better. his heart had simply sealed itself back up from its panic.

—————

****

**AFTER** the snafu in his chambers, laurent felt it prudent to take a plum for the road and make his way down to the stables. wagons had come from chastillon with thirty horses and twice as many trunks: laurent hadn't wanted to leave anything to chance in achelos when it came to the horses' care, even if he had curiously discussed this achelon seashell treatment for thrush with one of his personal grooms. the horsemaster at chastillon had come to arles with six grooms and ten stable boys, and the royal stables were, in no uncertain terms, organized chaos. but a chaotic stable yard was where laurent thrived, and he felt less anxious here than he had in his own apartments.

he stripped his elegant seafoam jacket off with eager fingers, and hung it on a hook by méduse's stall with all the care he might have treated a rag. it was often these subtle signs that told the stable staff that laurent was somewhere among them: if they didn't spot his pale hair in a stall or in the yard, they would see an ornate brocade something or other that he'd shed in favor of simply getting his shirt dirty.

sometimes the complex tasks made him happiest, the chores that only a master horseman could hope to execute, things to make him feel competent and strong and useful. but sometimes all that he could do, or was needed for, was to run his fingers through méduse's tail, applying a few drops of oil so that it shone blue-black, heavy and thick to her cannon bone, where it was neatly banged. with a little knife, he trimmed the bottom clean. she would be her most beautiful when they arrived at ios.

"didn't anyone ever tell you," came a familiar voice, "that it's dangerous to stand behind a horse? you might get kicked." indeed, laurent was kneeling behind her, but being kicked was not a concern, and the voice had clearly been ribbing. he knew the exact tone, knew that this voice never teased anything crueler than this. aimeric had always been a sweet boy.

laurent's guard peered at him over the stall gate, arms folded atop it, and he wore the small smile that laurent remembered looking forward to. after laurent had ruined that face, aimeric had found new people to aim it at: the other highborn boys in the prince and king's guards, and whether it was in friendship or something more, laurent didn't dare to ask anyone. aimeric was sworn to protect him, and couldn't go home to his family unless turned off, and laurent would never shame him so. the least he could do, then, was to simply let the boy live a life as far removed from his charge as possible. it was not rare for them to be so close, but truly, laurent had never anticipated that they might share such casual conversation again.

"imagine," laurent mused, and he found himself nervous, "if she caved my head in right now and you'd simply been standing there peering like a nosy child." he returned aimeric's smile, but it was rueful in all the ways it could have been. in and around his lingering anxiety flowed familiar shame and sadness: they seemed to come so easily to him, always ready to flood his center regardless of what he'd been feeling. 

"she's your sister. i should raise arms against her?" what a horrible memory that evoked. the first time he had introduced her to aimeric, when she was still newly broken. he had shown his new friend this exquisite gift, told aimeric of her saucy attitude and unending desire to please, and as she'd whuffed at his ear with her soft muzzle to make him laugh, aimeric had said _like a silly little sister_. it had been in this exact stall. laurent's heart felt compressed in his ribcage, and he used her strong white hock as leverage to stand.

at full height, he and aimeric were eye-to-eye. they both had the tall elegance of nobility, and laurent couldn't help but marvel again at how beautiful he was. there had never been a moment where his heart had stopped aching for his gentle eyes and rosy cheeks. "never. you are sworn to protect her, too," he said conversationally, patting her on the rump and pocketing his knife before he leaned against the stall door. they were close, looking sideways at each other, and laurent could catch a familiar scent, something rather nutty on aimeric's skin. "have you come to see me off?" laurent hadn't meant for it to come out quite as morose sounding as it did, but then, he had never felt right polishing himself too much around aimeric.

"in a sense."

laurent just nodded. he would have liked to have gone back in time. eight years, two years, six months. he knew what hung unspoken between them: that laurent had gathered the strength to give himself to another, and that for whatever reason, aimeric was not the one.

the young guard shifted, chin on the heel of his palm, regarding his prince, and laurent stood toeing the straw. graciously, aimeric broke the silence. "it's a funny thing," he said without a trace of sarcasm, "i have found someone, too."

"oh?" it was unexpected, the way this made laurent's heart levitate. of course, there was a little of jealousy, but it was as if a drain had been unstoppered and some of the sadness and guilt was able to escape his chest. he looked sidelong at aimeric, who was still smiling with his pretty red lips. "that makes me very happy," laurent breathed, and somehow it felt like a confession. the air shifted a little between them. "who is it?"

"oh," aimeric parroted, but with wide eyes and an even brighter smile, "i can't tell you. he's sworn me to secrecy."

aimeric would have known that this—the suggestion that something was being kept from the prince—would irritate laurent beyond measure, and the look of amusement on his face told laurent that he was showing his indignation. laurent could command him to reveal the truth: it was well within his rights as prince, part of the vows that aimeric had taken when he became one of laurent's guards. but they both knew he wouldn't levy such a command. it would have been cruel. so laurent just barely hid his smile, moved by the sheer cheek of it all. aimeric teased him like they were just friends once more, and it made laurent's heart ache like a newly healed wound—better, but scarred.

aimeric shifted again, and laurent could hear the _plink_ of the starburst pin on the boy's chest as it pressed against the iron grate of the stall door. "i have a request, your highness. if you would hear it."

laurent's fingers found his signet ring and he gave it a twist: it was a cool day, and it was loose on his finger. "i would."

"might you bring me to ios?"

this was a surprise, and laurent nearly pulled the ring off to be lost in the straw. "you would want that?" he looked at aimeric with a knitted brow. he remembered sitting in auguste's study with jord and olivér and his brother, sorting through their guards, picking who might accompany laurent on his voyage. aimeric had been a quick and easy "stay": he wouldn't want to be party to watching this courtship unfold, and laurent would not subject him to it, and jord had given his gruff shrug and crossed his name from the list.

"you want to come?" he was a little suspicious, but aimeric, he saw, was positively twitching with anticipation of an answer. it was clear that he very badly wanted to come. so laurent gave aimeric what he could, at the very least: "i don't see why not."

—————

****

**ARLES** to coquain was two day's ride. the morning of their departure was predictably off to a slow start: they would stop at chastillon the first night, then ride hard the next day to the seaside city, and sail the next morning at first light.

he knew that the grand courtyard was still filling with his retinue, so laurent took his time. the royal apartments were quiet: all of his trunks had been removed and taken down, and what was left in his chambers felt like an uncomplicated version of himself: no books, just his furniture. it might have been a blank slate, ready for another prince to take his place, a room at an inn that had been turned down for the next guest.

he walked down the grand checkered hallway to the other side of the courtyard, soundtracked by the song of larks in the willow trees, until he came to the grand, golden set of doors that led to the king's suites. they were not flanked by guards, which generally meant they were vacant, and so he pulled them open. these apartments were as familiar as his own: they had been his once, when his father was alive. auguste had been old enough to occupy the prince's apartments, of course, but until marlas, laurent slept in the chamber beside his parents. it was now bautizar's room. how many ghostly memories he had here in this grand sitting room, its loggia offering an uninterrupted and breathtaking view of the city, the sparkling seraine winding through it on her slow journey south, the forest to the north. laurent and auguste had sat long ago on the edge of the balcony, peering at the horizon to the west to see if they could spot the ocean, although it was too far to see even on a clear day. but laurent would cry out that he'd seen a whale, and point with a fat finger, and auguste would make a horrible wailing sound and say, _that's what whales sound like!_ to which a six-year-old laurent could do nothing but squeal at in delight. 

he sat where he stood, tucking his long legs beneath him on the intricately woven carpet in the silence. auguste and liesl had, of course, rearranged the space several times over, but there were still glimpses of how it had been: the mosaics in the walls had not changed, exquisite renderings of meadows and sea and sky and woods, of all kinds of flora and fauna, all the wonders and riches of vere. the tall ceiling was as the rest of the royal apartments were: a velvety midnight blue inlaid with diamond stars that glittered in the mild sunlight. his father had taught him the constellations thus, pointing to where they had appeared on the ceilings and then challenging him to run out and locate them in the night sky. as he gazed upwards, his breath came in a rattle. it was all he could manage through the rock in his throat, and he succumbed to the overwhelming desire for release, and cried.

in the silence, he felt his sobs must have been deafening, because it was all he could hear or feel. to die there on the rug would have been the kindest fate he could imagine. he would give up every possibility of happiness to hold onto this, all of the misery and pain that this place had provided him with and the chain that they had forged between laurent and—

he felt a hand on his shoulder, the press of a thigh against his where he knelt, and everything familiar and good in the world wrapped him up like an envelope of strong arms. tears that weren't his own smeared his cheek, and he heard auguste's shaking breath in his ear.

when he spoke, he couldn't even try for surety or stability: every word came with its own trembling sob and crack in his voice.

"tell me this isn't the end of this," he begged, and at the possibility, he felt whipped by another round of sobs. his head was encased, slowly, and he could feel his wet cheeks held. he could have died there, too, held by his brother as he had been for twenty years in that cursed apartment. if the world had simply crumbled around them, he would be happy, happy to lose everything but this. he felt auguste's lips on his, hot with tears, a kiss chaste and still but with more purpose and fire than any touch laurent had ever felt. he was branded by it, his mouth blistered when auguste released him and embraced him again. now, laurent could see this kiss in the barren expanse of the new side of the chasm. another piece in the after, where he could look back and see everything in the before, unable to reach it even if he wanted to.

"we have our lives ahead of us," auguste whispered into laurent's hair, his voice raw with tears. "and we'll be together all of it. i will make marlas the capital, i will march into achelos and kill theomedes and all the rest and conquer it all for you, and if that doesn't make you happy, then i'll chain you to me and jump into the ocean." they were wild promises and laurent didn't doubt for a moment that auguste would honor their every word.

silently, for long minutes they wept, auguste holding laurent until he was sure that he would just dissolve and be absorbed into his brother's jacket, and thought that would be a fine fate, too. but eventually, auguste touched laurent's cheek, and a vacuum formed between their bodies, and they were apart. they could orbit one another as easily as they could merge.

"you do not have to go," auguste breathed, and it was meant to be a reassurance. laurent felt like he was looking into a mirror: as a tear on his left cheek crescendoed over his cheekbone and down to his chin, so did a tear on auguste's right. he knew that his own blue eyes gained a clarity and redness when he cried, the same as he saw now in auguste's.

"i know," laurent breathed, punctuating it with a great sniffle. he did know: they both did. he did not have to go, but he would. this side of the chasm was too empty, and longed to be filled. he took another deep, tremulous breath, and exhaled through his lips, which were newly covered in invisible scars. he felt gutted, watching his sorrow alive on auguste's face. they were two halves of a whole. "i will never love anything the way i love you." it was a promise as much as, perhaps, a confession.

"sometimes," auguste said like he was suddenly a hundred years old, "the only thing that gives me faith in the world is the knowledge that you're in it with me."

—————

****

**COQUAIN** was a bustling port city: on the northern coast of vere, it was the closest as the crow flew to the capitol at arles. while goods from the south generally travelled up along the seraine, the road from arles to coquain was a heavily trafficked trade route in its own right. the geography, also, must have been irresistible to the lords and merchants that had built it: a deep-water bay with a rather narrow straight leading out to the ocean, it was a natural harbor, safe from the aggression of the ocean and with a secure entry, to boot. 

they had been loading cargo since well before dawn. six matching ships, sleek new sloops shining with varnish, were docked in a neat line, each about one hundred feet long. two hung low in the water, full of treasure, jewels and gold by the trunkful. another had been outfitted especially for the horses and the grooms, a floating stable, and the other two built to hold the fifty men that laurent brought with him. each one had the same gilded figurehead: a charging stallion, nostrils flared, mane frozen in an invisible whipping wind. on the stern, laurent's royal seal. they had, of course, not been built over the course of two weeks: the seal and figureheads were simply installed on selections from the royal fleet. but they were new still and gifts from auguste, and despite his distaste for seafaring, laurent did find they cut a handsome little fleet in the harbor.

after a brief breakfast, they had come, and by eight bells, the ships were waiting on one thing: their prince. all but one gangway had been pulled up, and the achelons strolled up it as if this were nothing new to them, chatting in their native language: they were happy to be going home, laurent saw, even damen. it was just jord who stood with him on the dock, and laurent stared up at the deck above them.

"we're going together," he heard jord say, and felt his heart galvanized only a little. but a little was enough.

laurent turned. all he could see was the bustling road that bordered the harbor, a cityscape that looked distantly familiar, like seeing a cousin for the first time and recognizing oneself in their features. it was veretian, and it would have to do. with a few quick, long strides, he was off the dock and back on solid land. he knelt, furtively, not because he was ashamed but because this felt like a ritual he should be alone for, not surrounded by dock workers and in front of a busy road packed with traders and merchants and servants. but he could close his eyes and silence them for a moment, long enough to press his lips to the sandy soil.

—————

****

**THE** bay waters were calm, as the always were, even when the city was being battered with a storm. it was what lay outside the bay that had laurent twisting his ring in his fingers. damen, by contrast, looked absolutely at peace, his eyes closed in an expression of bliss, the wind whipping at his chocolate curls. ios was a seaside city. "you grew up sailing, didn't you?" laurent said bitterly.

"sailing, rowing. swimming in the ocean. i may not be kemptian, but i'm at home on the sea."

laurent wrinkled his nose at damen's casual manner. he did not feel coddled in the way he would have liked to have been. but as if his mind had been read, damen turned and tucked laurent's hair behind his ear, and laurent was felled by the sweet look he was being given. considering the amount of men on deck preparing the ship for her sail, it was a very public show of affection. "it's a couple of days. you are so much stronger than you know."

the only look laurent could return was one damen had used on him often: adoring exasperation. he cupped damen's cheek and smiled with pity. "my sweet prince. i know exactly how strong i am."

by lunch, he was green, and was given a very wide berth. they took it belowdeck on laurent's insistence: the wind above was too strong to sit pleasantly, and he'd told the first mate that he would get sick sooner or later, and if he had to suffer he would do it on a featherbed in his cabin. so a few men had gathered there as he loosened the laces on his jacket, and a servant wrung a washcloth of cool water for his forehead: jord, louis, aimeric, and olivér, who sat at the table and helped themselves as if laurent were barely there. he wouldn't have traded the company for the world, but in sickness was doubly annoyed at how familiar they could be sometimes. so it was bliss when damen came in, big and loud and bright and full of cheer as always, and after clapping olivér on the shoulders, he came to sit beside laurent on the bed rather than join the men at the table.

"would you like anything to eat?" he asked, and laurent felt sated, appropriately cooed over, even enough to let his lips curl into a tight smile.

"i think perhaps it would be a waste," laurent replied, and he let damen take the washcloth from his hand and apply it himself to laurent's throat and forehead. it was very nice to be adored thus.

"are you sure?" came aimeric's voice from the table: he had stood briefly to peer over the spread. "no grilled halibut in creme béarnaise? or perhaps pickled peaches?" again, laurent was struck that he would have preferred aimeric lovesick and afraid rather than friendly and comfortable in his presence once more. laurent swallowed hard, eyes fluttering.

"shut the fuck up," he groaned, and the laughter that came was mostly pitying. this was a room of men who could take more of laurent's venom than the average, but they still had their threshold. auguste was the only one strong enough to withstand him at full-force, although with the ocean already having given him a thorough beating, laurent was hardly at the peak of his strength. he moaned, his stomach reeling with the particular unpredictability of a gut ready to expel something, and squeezed his eyes closed. 

damen had laughed, too, the most pitying of all, but he hadn't begun to eat, and so laurent pardoned him silently for finding humor in his suffering. "maybe something mild. a little brown bread? or an orange? maybe it would settle your stomach." he was so sweet that it made laurent's heart ache. what a cruel thing it was that he couldn't pepper damen's face in kisses and make him laugh in earnest happiness. he could only sway a bit and groan.

"i think," jord said, "richer is better. maybe some soft boiled eggs."

he hated them. " _get OUT_." he yelled through another wave of nausea: they were growing more violent belowdeck. "take this shit with you. anywhere but in here."

"men drew lots not to be on this ship," jord said with all the brutal honesty that only he could get away with, and laurent didn't have the fight in him to come up with a rude remark. he was glad they'd done so, so that more men not harass him. he simply slumped onto his side away from damen, and felt his calf being taken into his lover's lap and caressed with the kind of touch that came second nature to lifetime companions. through his eyelashes, he watched everyone file out the door, carrying their plates of food, louis eating with his fingers like a little monster. and he saw aimeric say something under his breath to jord, who chuckled in a way that was completely foreign to laurent: he looked... suave. a man confident of something beyond his fighting prowess and his station. aimeric glanced at jord's lips, and bit his own in a showy attempt of concealing his own smile, and then the door was closing behind them. laurent felt damen removing his boot, and a wash of cool took his body, leaving the back of his neck tingling. he knew what he had just seen. he exchanged that look regularly now with the man who was now dutifully tending to him like a squire.

"oh," he breathed, his bottom lip trembling. perhaps he had been approaching the verge of tears with regards to his physical condition, but it was as if a dam had been broken, and he was drained and washed clean of all the guilt and sadness that had remained inside his heart for aimeric. "that's so lovely," he said tenderly, deeply touched. and then he vomited.

—————

****

**TWO** and a half days blended together thus: laurent unable to get out of the bed in his cabin. he took a sleeping draught so that he didn't have to suffer consciousness, which entailed nothing but the vacillation between gut-wrenching hunger and gut-wrenching nausea. standing didn't help. being above deck didn't help. peppermint tea didn't help, and after the first night the smell of it made him so furious and sick that he'd ordered it kept from the cabin. nothing worked but sleep, which he found fraudulently, and which came with violet dreams of blood-soaked ornamental carpets in veretian floral and achelon geometry.

on the third day, damen roused him as the sun began to hang low in the sky. he could see the golden cast of it even in the windowless cabin: it spilled in through the door and down from the deck, damen its broad, warm ambassador, carrying a little of it wherever he went. laurent knew and spoke first, his voice scratched up with lack of use and abundance of vomiting. "i can get up," he rasped, even though nodding made him vertigious. he had strength in him for this, for pushing himself up until he was seated on the featherbed. drearily, he looked around: there was no evidence for or against damen having slept there at all. not that laurent would have blamed him. he didn't know why he looked, really. "have someone come dress me. i will kiss the land with the same passion i kiss you."

damen frowned. "oh, you'll get sand in your mouth."

a servant had come in to attend to laurent: with the weakness of an old man, he splashed his face with cool water, and changed out of his ripe nightshirt. it was all warmer here: summer lingered into autumn this far south, so the breeches and jacket he wore were of fine blank linen, and he had the laces tied with a little extra slack for his wrists and throat to breathe. he had a comb run through his hair, which he'd wet in the basin, so that if it could not be clean and soft it would at least be slicked back tidily. not having eaten for the better part of two days, he was especially angular in the little looking glass, and so white that his eyelids were veined blue. a ghost in black, then, would be how he'd arrive in ios.

he climbed the wooden stairs that led from the cabins to the main deck, slow with a curled lip. the sails were being lowered, the brilliant blue and white checkers with their forty-foot starburst folding in on themselves. at least the flags still whipped from the stern, a massive silk banner in the colors of vere, below it a flurry of flags bearing the heraldry of each of laurent's investitures, of which there were now a great many. many kings didn't fly this many on their fleets. but when the sails came down, the vision of the sunset came more alive. these were the rare sunsets that told of a calm ocean beyond the straight, gracious and gentle westerlies, but also the particular arrangement of the sun and moon in early autumn: both hung low in the sky, both fat as could be, the sun achelon red, the moon a warm gold, pockmarked and beautiful yet. the water was a sea of broken glass before them, the surface irritated only barely by the breeze and the lowering of the oars. they would row into the docks.

there was a second set of stairs leading up to the foredeck, which was where damen stood—he could only barely see him but for the flick of his red cape—and he groaned hoarsely at the injustice of it all, having to scale even more steps. when he reached the top, however, he was stilled.

the cliffs were sheer and white as if made of ice, soaring out of the darkening ocean like some otherworldly mass, like a part of the moon had fallen off and landed here in the gulf of atros. and built to the edge of the cliff as if it were a stubborn ground covering flower was ios, thousands of lamps sparkling in the evening, all of its buildings white and square like sugar cubes, building up and up and culminating in a palace so exquisitely austere that laurent's breath caught in his throat. it was beautiful, the perfect opposite of arles and how it sprawled in all the colors of the rainbow over the sides of the seraine, its brown and black gabled roofs, the palace a gilded explosion of ornament on the highest hill. this was not home at all.

the ship had begun to still in the water as the sails were tied down, and laurent could see the rest of their small fleet doing the same, oarsmen taking their places beneath the cabins. they were not the only ones making use of the ionian port, of course, but laurent was taken aback at how littered the gulf was with vessels. with great care, he took the last few steps to flank damen, who stood with his hands clasped behind his back, his pin and gold spaulders glittering in the red light. now beside him, laurent could see that he was beaming, giddy like a child, front teeth digging so hard into his bottom lip that laurent was afraid he might split it in his lunacy. he bounced on the balls of his sandaled feet, which made laurent's vision vibrate uncomfortably. "stop bouncing," he commanded, although it was with all the authority that he might chastise a kitten for meowing. damen did as he was told, but did not stop smiling, and instead used his abundant energy to clasp his hands to laurent's arms, giving him a perfunctory, respectful squeeze. 

"welcome," he murmured, voice like warm honey, just another part of the sunset. laurent brought his hand up to rest atop damen's on his bicep, and surveyed the city that they approached, feeling nothing but his own exhaustion.

"thank you." he let himself lean against damen until they docked.

—————

—————

****

**ACHELON** beds lacked the massive canopies that were commonplace in vere. there were no heavy drapes to be pulled back in the morning, nothing keeping sleeping men from the brilliance of the sun. so laurent rose fairly early, unable to sleep more than an hour past sunrise. a servant brought him fresh ginger tea and soft bread baked with olives, which he scantly nibbled at, pushing himself halfway up in bed and taking stock of his surroundings.

his chamber was austere, a stark contrast to the ornament of the palace at arles. of course, there were still intricacies belying a royal home. the cornices were carved with exquisite scenes of animals and trees, the walls inlaid with decorative panels of iridescent shells, the marble floor covered with a rug of bright blue to match the sea outside the windows. the day was clear, and isthma looked to be within swimming distance, although laurent knew this was both untrue and stupid. the sea this far south was a happy breeding ground for sharks of terrifying size.

there was an archway across from the bed that led into another, larger room, that was full of bright light and, laurent could see, at least two sitting areas, and contained all of his trunks, which were being unpacked. his books were stacked on the floor along the wall in colorful piles, and he figured that achelon chambers didn't usually boast build-in-bookshelves like the kind he'd had in vere. to his right, he glimpsed his reflection in a geometric golden looking glass: he had smudges beneath his eyes and a sickly look to his cheeks, his hair a dirty mess. he had been asleep for perhaps twelve hours, and while he felt a significant improvement in his mood and nausea, his looks were still catching up. despite being on land once more, he looked worse than he remembered on the ship, but then, his memory was deeply hazy.

as he peered around and sipped his tea slowly, he heard a bit of commotion outside the door, and a moment later a man came in: perhaps not a servant, given the quality of his dress, but then again, laurent stumbled often when trying to identify an achelon's social status by the look of their garments. they all dressed too damn alike. jord followed him, hand on the hilt of his sword casually, looking from laurent to the new guest with a cocked eyebrow. he'd let the man by, but stuck to the promise they'd made auguste: the only one to be alone with laurent, ever, was damen. anyone else would be accompanied by jord or olivér.

"your highness," he offered in greeting, and laurent returned his nod, answering the unasked question aloud:

"i am feeling better, still weak and a bit queasy. but the palace has stopped rocking violently."

the man had approached laurent's beside and laid a long, polished wood box on the rumpled linen covers.

"he's a healer. says he's got a cure for the spins," jord explained, sidling up beside the man and surveying, with cool suspicion, as he opened the box.

it was lined with a long row of at least one hundred very thin needles, the steel of them glinting in the morning sunlight. laurent heard jord hum his disapproval before he'd even had time to process what they were.

"they go under the skin, but not so deeply that you might bleed," said the healer in bright achelon, plucking one from its home within the box and, to laurent's mild disgust, he demonstrated on himself, pushing the needle into the meat of his forearm delicately. he was right: there was no blood. it simply sat straight, perpendicular to the skin, the sharp tip embedded into his flesh. laurent's face contorted with displeasure, and he heard jord laugh at it all.

the captain was incredulous as he spoke in veretian: laurent knew his middling achelon had been improving slowly, but jord was rather shy about it among native speakers. he could understand much, though, a quiet listener. "you're not putting those anywhere near him."

"yes—i mean n-no, no thank you," laurent insisted in achelon, raising a hand cautiously in front of his chest, although the healer looked imploring and gentle.

"it is an ancient art, used by all akielons. it does not hurt!"

laurent grimaced, watching the hair-thin needle wobble a bit in the healer's arm. "perhaps next time," he said delicately, and jord was still laughing, shaking his head at the spectacle of it all.

there was a bit more commotion from the hall, which had jord glancing over his shoulder, and laurent, too, and the healer, although he was the only one in the room who immediately went to his knees on the striated blue rug as damen waltzed in. he looked as if three days at sea had been a rejuvenating lark for him: his cheeks were smudged with new freckles, his chiton fine and neatly pleated, his hair alive with the fluffy quality that only freshly washed curls had. he was luminous, a man happy to be home, and laurent felt keenly aware of his own appearance, sweat-damp and pallid despite the cool bath he'd taken the night before. he didn't even know where he was in the palace.

"oh, i love needling," damen crowed, his cheery voice filling the chamber, and he gave the healer a hearty clap on the shoulder, which he had to bend down to do. it was bizarre, as always, to see him go to embrace someone actively prostrating to their prince. he could not imagine jord kneeling so deeply to him, but it seemed like members of the achelon royal household were significantly less chummy with their charges than the attendants in vere. "pellokos does it every time i drink too much, after every fight..." damen threw a cheeky grin at jord, "you can try it, of course, if you've considered my invitation."

laurent felt himself smile at the look that jord gave damen. it was far from outright affection, but begrudging approval felt better than simply ignoring his existence. "i think we'll take you up on it. once the men settle in a bit." he didn't need to say aloud that they were on edge, just one night into their stay in a new country, under explicit instructions from auguste to be wary.

"really," laurent interjected, doing his best to look kindly at the healer as the man stood, humble, by damen's side. was this pellokos? it was difficult to imagine this man having the confidence to do anything to damen's body after such a show of subservience, but then he thought about what else, perhaps, damen might need to have done to his body after a rigorous sparring session, and he blinked, hoping that his cheeks were sickly enough to hide the blush he could feel blooming. "i will try it, next time." he did his best to sound kindly and enthusiastic, although this was a boldfaced lie. "i worry that it might have the opposite effect. when i'm in a stronger state, perhaps." he did not want to be rude, but the idea had truly set his stomach back a few hours.

"i'll show you out," jord said in his thickly accented achelon, which gave the words a haughty drawl that laurent found very funny coming from such a humble man. the healer removed his self-inflicted needle and stuck it into a pouch, closing his little box of horrors. he gave damen a deferential bow, and when he rose and saw damen staring at laurent with his usual abject adoration, he offered laurent a curt, uncertain bow, too, before he let jord wheel him out by the shoulders.

the door closed behind them, and damen sat where the box had been laid, his hand reaching out for laurent's. in a bed of nothing but white linens, his skin looked impossibly dark and radiant. "i'm sorry," he said sweetly, the ghost of a smile still on his lips as he brought laurent's hand to them, planting a small bouquet of kisses to the knuckles. "i told them to do what they could to make you comfortable. i know they don't use the needles in vere."

"no, in vere they'd be bloodletting me instead. it's alright. i doubt jord would have let him get within a foot of me with them, even if i'd wanted to try. and the ginger tea is the most effective treatment i've tried. it helps that it doesn't involve puncturing my skin."

"i'm glad he's here with you." he meant jord. _he is here with someone else, too_ , laurent thought, and it took him a moment to remember why he was so certain of this fact. the look he had seen jord and aimeric share, the way that aimeric had smelled in the stables, like walnuts. it was how jord smelled, nutty and rich.

laurent watched damen kissing the back of his hand, his wrist. "you think your father will like that i brought a small army to his palace?"

damen stopped his kissing and considered it. "no. but i think he can be brought to see the reason behind it. if i were a daughter instead of a son, he wouldn't send me to a foreign capitol without fifty men, at least."

with a little sniff and a tug of his hand, laurent registered his displeasure at the comparison, even if he was now intimately familiar with the accuracy.

"if i were a kemptian prince, i wouldn't have been too sick to walk off the boat," laurent huffed. "i inherit everything from my mother but seaworthiness." but damen would hear none of it. he placed laurent's hand down on the covers again, delicately, and leaned forward to cup laurent's cheek. perhaps the looking glass had been wrong, for he felt terrifyingly beautiful when damen looked at him that way.

"it's a good thing i'm not courting you for your naval prowess. and you walked off on your own two feet. we just had to carry you all the way up here." damen said it with a tone that was becoming newly familiar to laurent: sweet but weary, it was the voice he used when he was tired of joking, when he was dying to be frank. he seemed always ready to open his heart for laurent, didn't take as much comfort in hiding behind the curtains of causticity or humor, but would happily talk to laurent through them if it made him feel safest. "you don't know how it makes me feel to see you here," he breathed, raw as could be, and laurent's own chest felt rather frozen solid. "like a statue come to life."

laurent leaned in just to offer himself for a kiss, knowing that in his state, after being sick for three days and waking damp with his own sweat, he may have only been desirable from a distance, and even then wouldn't have blamed damen for hesitating. but damen seemed as if he'd been waiting outside laurent's door all night for the chance. both of his rough hands came to plant themselves on either side of laurent's face and suddenly he felt himself engulfed, every missed kiss of the past three days in one, featherweight compassion and desire like hot wax, unchecked bliss and barely checked hunger. of course damen had spent the entirety of their voyage wanting—laurent would have, if their positions had been reversed. he pressed his warm teacup to damen's stomach and damen, blindly and dexterously, simply took it from him and tossed it beside them on the bed, the yellow dregs and few sips left streaking the covers, teacup on its side. problem solved, laurent supposed, with a recklessness particular to damen, one that he had come to love.

like he had with the kiss, laurent introduced every new step, as if repeating a dance that damen had taught him only a week ago: he unpinned the shoulder of damen's chiton, holding the warmth and weight of the gold pin in his hand before he set it gingerly down beside the teacup. damen untied the messy bow at laurent's throat, opening the neck of his nightshirt. they could not go piece by piece, since all laurent had to offer was the rest of his nightshirt, ready to be shucked over his head, but for the removal of damen's sandals, he offered his throat for kissing, and for the untying of the gold braid at damen's waist, he made a wounded sound, although perhaps that was simply a reaction to damen's warm skin beneath his fingers. his smooth hip.

it felt rather right to be naked in such a simple room, as if even in a damp nightshirt he'd been overdressed. he began to feel more like himself with every passing moment, more like himself as he clambered into damen's lap and moved in subtle shifts against his fingers, more like himself when damen was inside of him and they were mouth to open mouth, more breathing the same air than kissing.

by the time damen was laying on his side, plucking the teacup from where he'd tossed it and frowning at the mess he'd made, laurent felt just some lingering weariness from their journey, but otherwise felt his edge sharpened, his mind brighter, his stomach very much settled. "that was restorative," he quipped, watching damen cooly, if one could look cooly at a well-fucked lover laying on a bed naked. "you don't do _that_ for the men after fights, too, do you? is that why they love you so?"

damen groaned with a laugh, and when his hand leapt forward to grab laurent's wrist, it was so at odds with the moment's laid back quality that laurent found himself gasping and going rigid, pulled down to damen before he could struggle. to laugh, for their noses to bump, for their kisses to misfire, always catching a bottom lip or a corner of the mouth: laurent couldn't really remember much of their voyage, it had felt like a month and an hour all at once, but whatever it was, it had been too long away from this.

"i don't know that i'd call it a needle," damen protested, but laurent had too much ammunition.

"a needling, just a little prick," he goaded, and damen had laurent by the chin, kissing him to stop them both from laughing.

—————

****

**DAMEN** watched him be dressed, circling the room slowly like a big cat stalking its prey, arms crossed across his broad chest which had now, unfortunately, been obfuscated once more by his chiton. and laurent was fairly certain why damen had such a pleased hunger in his eyes: the jacket that laurent's servants were lacing him into was shocking vermilion, the color of the achelon royal family. like most of the clothes he'd brought, laurent had it made in the few days before their departure for ios, the seamstresses working double time to finish every piece. but this was special. not the brilliant blue of his own family, nor any of the other supple shades he'd brought, and when a servant pinned his starburst brooch to his chest, the message was commanding: laurent had come to court and assumed the right to wear the color of the royal family as if he were already part of it. if any part of damen might have objected, it was clearly not going to have its day in the sun. laurent felt very much like a cake that had been put in front of a man on hunger strike.

"the healer earlier didn't seem to know to bow to me," he said, looking down his nose from his perch on the pedestal while his servants laced and laced. jord leaned against the doorframe, whittling a little hunk of olive wood with a small knife. no one in the room was a particular threat, but then, laurent didn't just keep jord around for his guard duties.

"pellokos? laurent," damen sighed, shaking his head with that omnipresent smile on his lips, "it may take a few days for them to... warm to you."

"you know that if i were stupid, i might not have expected that. and then i would have been heartbroken, to arrive here to find everyone hated me without ever having met me."

"but you are not stupid. do you think _i_ would have let you bring an army to ios if i didn't think you had good reason? i wouldn't have asked you to come here if i didn't think you were up for the challenge. i haven't seen you shy away from one yet." laurent was reminded of his mother's words, of auguste's ferocity at the docks. everyone thought he could do this, but sometimes that was still not enough to make one believe in oneself. 

"so. a country full of nikandroses. i must sharpen my tongue." he heard jord chuckle appreciatively: seeing nikandros dressed down had become one of his favorite spectator sports.

"no," damen insisted, gentle, plucking laurent's sapphire signet ring from a servant's hand and stepping forward to apply it himself. he held laurent's fingers and slipped it on, giving it a chaste kiss. "charm them first, please. they will see what i have, in time, i know."

laurent was warmed by the gesture, but he felt himself frown nonetheless, his lips pursing as he gave the bridge of damen's nose a disappointed tap with his knuckle. "i will always be two steps behind any other candidate in their eyes, no matter what i do. a veretian second son. i know that my fate here depends on the friendships i make. don't worry about me."

"if only you were an achelon woman," said jord from the doorway. laurent cocked a brow.

"if i were an achelon woman, i would kill myself," he sniffed. "i would be a veretian prince or nothing at all."

—————

****

**THIS** was what hennike had been training him for all his life. when she gave his slumping shoulders a little thwack of the thumb and forefinger, when she tapped beneath laurent's chin to remind him to lift it and hold it high, she had been teaching him the posture of a prince at a rather unwelcoming foreign court.

walking with purpose and confidence was only made slightly easier by damen's presence at his side. it didn't seem at all as a more naïve boy might have hoped—that damen would be so loved here that any choice of his would be readily accepted by his court. they clearly loved damen, but laurent wondered if he was the first unorthodox choice damen had made, or if this was behavior they had come to expect from their crown prince. was laurent the first to lead him around by the nose in these austere halls? he had spent his life without lovers, and forgot that other boys took them often.

the vestibule for the throne room was petite with open arches on three sides, doors on the fourth, and like most of the halls had an elegant courtier here and there, leaning on a column, sitting on a chaise in quiet conversation. damen, laurent, olivér, and jord came to a stop there, and damen gave laurent's hands a squeeze. "i'll go in and introduce you," he whispered, and his nerves were palpable. excitement, laurent felt, and something less pleasant too, anxiety or fear. laurent could do nothing but offer a ghost of a nod and a high-arched brow, watching his suitor disappear through the great olive wood doors, their marbled color holding laurent's gaze for a few long moments. they were now just three veretians, and laurent was overwhelmed with gratitude for the captains' presence at his sides.

"you must be the new thing," he heard from his left, in just passable veretian, and he could feel both captains flank him a bit closer. the speaker was a woman, but all the same. both of them had seen plenty of women and children wield knives at the behest of others.

she was pretty. since their arrival, laurent had not seen another blonde, although she was not quite as snowy as he, tawny instead of ivory. her hair was curled in tight ringlets and piled in a rather casual way on her head, held in place by gold pins, and laurent was reminded a bit of the girls he'd seen before hanging out brothel windows, overdone. a whore's hair, with a nasty tone of voice to match. most achelon nobles were olive-skinned with hair at least darker than dead grass: with her complexion, she stood out as gold among bronze.

"you must be poorly informed to not know this is the prince of vere," olivér spat back, and laurent was delighted for the captain's love of all things honorable. he would not tolerate a foreigner speaking down to a member of the veretian royal family.

she looked as if she had eaten a bad oyster. "you'll excuse me," she said in achelon, "my grasp on your language is tentative at best. it is generally—" her eyes swept over the three of them, full of disapproval, "—not considered worth studying here."

laurent took a long, shallow breath through his nose. damen was taking his damn time.

"and yet, your prince has a fine command of it. and _my_ fluency in _your_ language seems to have landed me in his good graces. but it does take a breadth of the mind to master many." an insult, to set the tone. but then he simply smiled. "your accent is lovely, though. and since my hope is that veretian would perhaps become more prevalent at court here—as, of course, akielon would in vere—it would be my pleasure to tutor you. what is your name?" his voice was saccharine enough that a trained ear like his guards' might have recognized it as false, but he could see her dark blue eyes calculating it, and his offer, and his smile, sizing him up. he narrowed his eyes, turning his expression more conspiratorial, and that was the key to unlocking hers. she mirrored it.

"jokaste," she said, raising her lovely, long-fingered hand, and, feeling as if he were not occupying his own body for how wrong it felt, he bent his head to kiss it.

"a name as exquisite as its mistress, my lady. i am, as olivér here accuses me, laurent of vere, and i am at your service. it is overwhelming to find oneself in a strange court full of new faces. what a delight to have made a friend already."

her olive face then read something laurent was familiar with, too: the conflict of suspicion and pleasure. to accept his flattery meant to accept him. "your accent is..." she paused, and this time when she peered judgmentally at him, it was with the glimmer of a smile in her eye and countenance. "theatrical. is that really how you speak akielon?"

blessedly, as if prompted, damen threw open the doors to the throne room. it did not faze laurent in the slightest that his lover looked so thoroughly ill at the sight of the two blondes together. he simply gave her a parting wink and left her standing to consider her options.

"are you charming people?" damen muttered furtively, holding out his arm for laurent to take. if he was so visibly on edge then _fine_ , laurent thought. he would exude coolness for the both of them. insulting someone always imbued him with a rush of confidence. he could do this. he could do anything.

"i simply cannot help it," he cooed, suddenly deeply self-conscious of his accent, and heard the great doors close behind them, jord and olivér's footsteps quieting as they flanked the exit.

the throne room was rather more ornately decorated, obviously, than laurent's apartment. still half as elaborate as anything in arles, though, which laurent supposed served the purpose of directing every eye to the throne at the head of the room, and the man on it. laurent could see a middling resemblance, although the king's beard was rather hard to shave with his mind's eye. if that was how damen might look with one, though, laurent thought it would not be the end of the world. theomedes was obviously older but still had the body of a fighter, strength and vitality written on every line, and was, when one ignored the way he looked at laurent, handsome. the woman seated to his left was beautiful, but she was neither damen's mother nor the queen, and so laurent did not regard her at all. another whore. they were common here.

"father," damen said loudly, "this is... the prince of vere. laurent." he hesitated, clearly unsure how to announce a foreign dignitary in the veretian way.

laurent shot him a kindly glance. "i know it is not customary to have a such a formal presentation in the akielon court," he interrupted sweetly in the most pitch-perfect achelon he could conjure—although his veretian accent was omnipresent. "but there have been changes to my station recently. i might announce myself." the words felt deeply bizarre coming out of his mouth, rather than that of a page. "i am my own royal highness prince laurent of vere and acquitart; lord of delfeur, varenne, marche, and chastillon; grand duke of hankë and ingria." it was a physical toil to appear so positive. he turned his gaze back to the king and, with a mildly unpleasant taste in his mouth, kneeled the way an achelon would before the king, both knees on the ground and forehead nearly there, too. it was, without a doubt, the most unnatural position he'd ever been in. he had never groveled to anyone like this.

theomedes let it go on a few seconds too long, which felt akin to a boot on laurent's neck. when the king finally told him to rise, he did so with grace, as if he appreciated the opportunity to kneel. 

"your majesty, if i may." it was not the appropriate address for an achelon royal, he knew that. his use of the traditional veretian honorific was intentional, though, a polite and firm line in the sand: he would kneel for this king, but his deference would be veretian alone. no one was exalted to him. he was uninterrupted after a pause, and so he continued. "i am awed by ios as i have been awed by your son. it is my most paramount pleasure to be welcomed so warmly to such an esteemed court, and an honor to meet you." his smile was painted on meticulously.

"an honor to be in the court of the man who killed your father?" a rather desperate quip meant to show that theomedes was unimpressed by laurent's new string of titles, but it was obvious that he had not anticipated the way that auguste had divided their power, and so the barb didn't sting as much as it might have.

theomedes had not been anywhere close to being the one to fell the fatal blow, but laurent was no longer a weeping child, and he had left the petulant teenager in his chambers. he softened his smile further. "i am proud that my father died for what he believed in," laurent said warmly, although every word was chosen like he was picking berries, tossing away anything less than plump, taut, sweet perfection. "a man of great conviction. there is no more honorable way to go. but my brother and i have grown into men of great conviction, too, with beliefs of our own, rather more modern than our father's. and a bright future in mind for our fair kingdom."

"how progressive," theomedes grunted. it was clear _progressive_ was not something he considered a virtue. "you are our guest," he continued, looking bored by laurent's presence: he inspected his nails drearily. "but my son was misguided in bringing you here. no heir to the akielon throne is going to marry a second son who can't give him an heir. it appears, unfortunately, that my son has thought with things other than his mind this time. as usual."

laurent knew that this was to be an exercise meant to bring him low, but he had not anticipated theomedes being so callous about his son, too. _they love each other as we do_ , auguste had said. laurent didn't buy it then. _i don't think anyone loves each other as we do_. theomedes was apparently not the coddling type, and laurent wondered if damen had expected this. to look away from the king's gaze, though, would signal weakness, so he did nothing but look mildly concerned.

"oh, but your majesty, it is your son's brilliant strategy that brings me to your court. i hope you don't mean to say that you might deny him the chance to rule vere."

theomedes bit, and it felt like seeing the distance to a wall on horseback. three, two, one, and he was there. "and how might he rule vere?"

"upon my brother's death, of course."

if all had been quiet in the court before, now one could hear a feather drop. laurent continued, since theomedes looked rather devilishly intrigued. he was a man easily coached, thought laurent, which was lucky. "the heir apparent, my young nephew crown prince bautizar, would by veretian law not ascend to the throne until he is twenty-one. so if my brother was to meet his untimely demise, say, in the months following a wedding, it would leave us with fourteen years of regency, which of course, as head of the royal household, i would oversee. and with my brother's lands as well as my own, which you have now heard to have expanded a great deal, i would control all of the mighty veretian armies and their lords. and the court. and the throne. and i might give it all to whomever i choose: let an akielon army march north, welcome them to arles with open arms."

theomedes cast a sidelong glance at his mistress, which laurent found more distasteful than the concept of the words he'd just spoken. "you plot treason." but he said it with what could only have been a tone of appreciation.

laurent laughed, and it was genuine, clear and cool and floating in the high ceiling. "no," he chuckled, because that _was_ a rich joke, and the suggestion was as ludicrous as it was offensive. but the laugh was one of coy dismissal rather than outright rejection. "i plot nothing." he trained his face into mock concern, which he knew would ring false as intended. it was the same expression he'd learned from auguste. "i simply commit to looking forward, and to planning for all eventualities—or possibilities. i am a pragmatic man who believes in the virtue of preparedness, and i would give your son a key to any kingdom i could. he is winning, as i'm sure you know."

"that is quite an imagination you have," theomedes mused, and laurent's smile went from trained to truly delighted at this dismissive response. it was the one he'd hoped for. he had all but confessed to theomedes that his intention was to let damen fuck his way onto the veretian throne, to kill auguste and depose his nephew.

"we are an imaginative sort in arles. surely, among kings, the imagination is the only limit to power. your majesty, i have come to ios as the object of your son's affection, and i am not the king of vere. but i hope you see that i bring a kingdom with me regardless. it is a dowry no princess could equal."

theomedes smiled back at him, but the condescending look was beginning to melt away. he was intrigued, or appreciative: laurent couldn't tell as acutely with the beard. "your dowry," he repeated the word with goading, but laurent was wholly unashamed, and kept his chin up as if his mother's finger was there supporting it.

"among other things. there are many levers to be pulled, your majesty. i understand the expectations you must have for your son, and i am here as a plenipotentiary. my brother has entrusted me with the negotiations of my betrothal. as blood of the kemptian and veretian crowns, i—"

"would collect another," interrupted theomedes, but laurent did not stumble.

"—might find my purpose in uniting them," he corrected. this was not a lie. he would unite them, rather than merge them. but it was better for theomedes to see laurent as a plotting diplomat with thinly-veiled nefarious intentions.

theomedes thought, which was obvious in the very achelon way he tapped his chin and squinted. laurent wondered vaguely whether thinking was a frequent activity for this man. he was keeping up, but only barely. after a long while of silence, the king spoke again.

"you're in quite a hurry. not a day ago you were practically being carried off your ship."

laurent's smile went back to forced, but unnoticeably so. "alas, i did not inherit my mother's kemptian sea legs. but i will inherit her three kemptian provinces, the three southern forts, on top of my own kemptian lands, of course. you see, i am not a dawdler, your majesty. i did not want to partake in another moment of your gracious hospitality before coming to an understanding about the gifts that i bear. two hulls full of veretian gemstones, i hope, will be an appropriate incarnation of the bounty i might bring to akielos." he tipped his head at the king's mistress, a show of respect that was the falsest thing he'd conjured all morning.

theomedes looked somewhere between annoyed and appreciative, which felt logical: he had been ready, perhaps looking forward to insulting laurent, his gender, his position, but instead had found his interest piqued by an offer too politically valuable to be dismissed so easily. and laurent had shown, if nothing else, an inhuman amount of pluck.

"the lady will take a trunk in her chambers," he finally conceded, "and you and i will sit after dinner and discuss how my son might expand this great kingdom of achelos after i am dead." laurent held his chin high. he'd gained more ground here in six minutes than he'd imagined he might have in a year. he bowed before theomedes could raise a hand to dismiss him, and felt damen beside him as he left through the heavy olive doors. suddenly, he was with his back to a column, damen in his space, holding his shoulders as if ready to shake laurent.

"you are a horror," damen said hurriedly, and laurent felt rather cornered: he was not the only one who interpreted damen's posture as a threat. jord was just over his shoulder, and laurent saw his own tension mirrored in his guard. damen's face was dark, almost appalled.

"you were so confident i could charm them. what did you think that would look like?" laurent snapped. theomedes had seemed, at worst, amused by laurent's words, but laurent thought his delivery had been outstanding. the achelon king was clearly keen to hear more. laurent was suddenly unsure, feeling strangely as if he had miscalculated. 

but damen's expression suddenly became clear. he was thrumming with something that laurent had seen before in him. the tension and thrill of seeing a victory within reach, a man wound up with the promise of a fight. and damen's face went sweetly pliant, and he smiled in that beautiful, awestruck way that laurent had come to know. "you're as sly as a fox," he laughed, and pressed a hasty kiss to laurent's mouth.

"not a snake?" laurent let out a shaky breath.

"no. snakes don't have such sweet ears." and he dove in to stick his tongue into laurent's ear, which made laurent recoil in disgust. but damen captured his wriggling arms and had his way with laurent's ear until laurent had tired himself squirming, trying in vain to stifle his laughter.

"it wasn't my idea," laurent gasped, palms planting hard against damen's chest, which had initially been an instinctual move meant to push him off, but infuriatingly he could feel nothing but warm muscle under his hands, and that was not something he wanted to repel at all. he lowered his voice. "you owe nikandros our happiness, which is not a phrase i thought i ever might say." damen had pulled back from his assault on laurent's now-wet ear, and looked at laurent like he'd just discovered the elixir of life, and laurent basked in it. "i think your father will agree to the terms. he looked eager. and he will never know whether they come to fruition, because by the time you ascend to the throne—"

"he will be dead," damen finished, and he did look very sad for a moment.

"yes. i have heard becoming king is a rather bittersweet process." he could remember acutely auguste's barely-restrained grief, the tears of mourning and terror that had streaked his brother's face at his ascension. "but it is an eventuality." he cupped damen's cheek and felt the stubble there of a morning without a razor.

damen looked as if he were choosing between the devil and the deep blue sea, and after several moments, he nodded solemnly. "well," he posited, looking determined, "can that be enough strategy and plots and treason for one morning? i'd like to show you my home."

laurent narrowed his eyes. "maybe we'll build up your tolerance slowly."

—————

****

**LAURENT** lolled his head to the side and saw that there were several red silk robes hung on a small row of brass pikes mounted to the marble wall: he extracted himself from beneath the mess of sheets and plucked one down. it was as too big, but the silk was rough and raw, so when he tied the waist he looked much like a mast wrapped in a billowing sail. he could hear damen groan behind him, and when he peered back over his shoulder, damen had his hand clasped to his forehead dramatically. whether he didn't approve of laurent being suddenly covered or the fact that he'd dare emerge from the bed at all, laurent didn't know or care. either one made him feel smug.

the chambers were damen if he were rendered in a building: vast, with high ceilings supported by columns, although not an airy space. the ceiling was draped with the same rich silk that laurent wore wrapped around him, great sails of red interspersed with gold geometric patterns. the same pattern was carved into the marble columns, and inlaid with olive wood on the floors. laurent ran his finger over where it appeared, depressed, in the nearest column. "what is this?"

"just a border."

laurent rolled his eyes to himself. "i mean the pattern. it's everywhere. is it supposed to... be anything?"

"oh, the meandros. i don't know. waves, eternity, infinity." fine. laurent would just make a point to ask aristokles about it, who would doubtless have six origin stories and would assign laurent to make a mosaic of it with seashells. he kept moving, bare feet padding over the cool floor. there was less furniture here than in vere, where his own chambers were full of books and tables and comfortable places to lounge, the large busy desk. the only things in damen's room were a long, flat chaise and two matching olive wood armoires.

"have you lived in this room your entire life?" he asked, peering through the arched doorway in one wall: like his own apartments, it led to a great sitting room, although despite being more fully-furnished, it didn't seem at all personal. 

damen made a puzzled sound. "no, i—oh. you mean has this been my bedroom my entire life." laurent shot an annoyed look over his shoulder, but then simply saw how brown damen looked sitting up bare-chested in the white sheets, and looked away again, nose turned up. perhaps getting up had been a mistake. there was nothing as interesting to look at in these apartments as damen. "mmhmm. this is it. it's different than in vere. we don't keep things everywhere."

"you don't _have things_ ," laurent corrected. he made his way to one of the twin armoires, and turned the brass key in the lock, pulling the doors open. here was something personal, perhaps: inside hung an exquisite suit of achelon armor, a brilliant silver breastplate, greaves and bracers, round shield emblazoned with an ornate, furious lion, all of the metalwork edged in brass, the leather straps and tunic all supple black leather. a helmet sat on the floor of the wardrobe, a bright red plume laying still and limp on its crown. there was wear on the metalwork, despite it being neatly polished to a brilliant shine. damen had fought wearing this, whether for show or for his life. laurent weighed whether or not he wanted to know. "did you wear this," he finally asked, turning to look over his shoulder again, but instead of finishing, he simply knit his brow.

"in marlas?" damen ventured, and laurent didn't nod. he just let his eyes flick down to the floor, and damen cocked his head. he felt studied. "yes. well, some parts. i lost some parts on the field."

laurent turned back to the cuirass and saw that there were several scratches in it that were a bit deeper, one just below where damen's heart would be beating. he gave the divot a tap with his forefinger, and closed and locked the doors carelessly. he passed the grand door and went to unlock the second armoire, but saw there was no key in the lock.

"what's in this one?" he gave the door a few knocks with his knuckle, as if whatever was inside might let him in. damen was still watching him when he turned for his answer.

"wouldn't you like to know?" he was so coy it made laurent want to strangle him with the belt of his stupid robe.

"i can pick a lock," laurent countered, eyes narrow, and damen just huffed in disbelief.

"why do you know how to do so many awful, unprincely things? who taught you all of this, picking locks and sabotaging things and throwing knives and being so full of mischief?"

laurent shrugged, giving up on the wardrobe and meaning back, slowly, along the outer wall to the bed, although he crossed through the columns to let the late afternoon sun kiss his cheeks in the loggia. "when auguste became king, he had less time to play with me. i suddenly had to find other people to talk to. the only ones i really liked were soldiers and grooms. common men."

coming up beside damen, albeit several paces to his left, he leaned against a column, crossing his arms over his chest. "i never felt safe around the boys at court. i never felt safe at court, ever, that first year. so i snuck out and found friends elsewhere. and jord became my big brother. you know he can be a little rough around the edges."

damen smiled fondly in agreement, but he looked down at his own hands, which he was wringing gently in his lap. "are you ever going to tell me what happened to you?" he asked gently.

laurent breathed a sad little laugh through his nose. "i'll tell you when we're married," he promised, although it was hollow. even after they'd exchanged vows, damen could demand an annulment. laurent would not volunteer the tale. if damen asked again when the wedding was over, he would reconsider telling him, perhaps. he bargained with himself in his head like a ruthless trader: _i will tell him, and he will love me regardless_ , _i will not tell him and he can never know and it is entirely not his business anyhow_ and _why would you expect him to want you after knowing? he will never fuck you again without thinking about it_. and the noise in his mind made him frown. predictably, it seemed damen could not stand the sight of it.

"you are the most interesting person i've ever met," damen said, painfully candid. laurent loved it when he did this, bared his heart in such a generous way, even when laurent was only good at skirting things and being opaque. as if he were ungrateful for the compliment, he rolled his eyes, but he lost the fight to stifle his rueful smile.

"because i am awful and unprincely?" he parroted facetiously. damen just smiled even wider.

"because you manage to be that and the most regal thing i've ever seen. you are the most noble, unpredictable, untamed, perfect creature." 

laurent glanced once more around the room. he had pictured something like what he'd remembered from arles: before he'd taken up residence in the prince's apartments, they had been auguste's. it had taken his whole household of servants every day to clean the place up. he dragged in sawdust and sand in his boots and clothes, left all manner of weapons lying around. laurent remembered their mother chastising him for it, although she'd confessed to laurent that before he was born—when auguste was a boy on the brink of being a teenager—he was even worse, a tornado running through the palace, knocking over vases and statues. what had damen destroyed? or had he been like laurent, content to simply follow his older brother around, awestruck and quiet, waiting for the chance to be included in his mischief?

"tell me about your brother," laurent prompted, dropping his arms from where he'd folded them and, after a beat, returning to damen's bedside, feeling very watched and studied as he climbed back in.

damen reached for him, and he acquiesced, sidling up beside him. "he's..."

there was a long pause, during which laurent furrowed his brow. "tall? ugly? smart?" he offered, puzzled by damen's inability to articulate even the most basic descriptors.

damen huffed a laugh. "he's hard to describe. how would you describe auguste?"

"like a god." laurent said it without hesitation, and damen clucked his tongue.

"kastor isn't like a god. he's the archetypal man. easily provoked, ruled by his emotions. but he's agreeable. he'll think you're very funny."

laurent narrowed his eyes. "so he's a brute." 

"no," protested damen, giving laurent's bicep a squeeze so firm it felt suspiciously like a pinch. it reminded him of the way auguste roughhoused with him. there were now, laurent supposed, two men in the world who could get away with that. "he's not a brute. he's a good man. he's just bold."

laurent craned his neck so that his mouth was against damen's jaw. he smelled like the eucalyptus trees they'd passed in the garden, which he'd said made a nice oil. laurent agreed, although the scent had at first made his nose crinkle with its tartness. on damen, though, it blossomed deeper. "i'm starting to see that's an achelon quality," he said in veretian: it sounded much more disparaging that way, which was intentional. damen smoothed his hand up laurent's shoulder to his throat, then slipped back down beneath the collar of the robe: laurent could feel the naked air on his shoulder. he had been dressed for all of five minutes, he thought fleetingly, but then, he felt like a gift being unwrapped, which made him feel very smug indeed.

"boldness?" damen said against laurent's temple. laurent grumbled.

"brutishness." 

some moments went by wherein he felt lips on his shoulder, his cheek, his brow. but they weren't kisses leading to anything, and he wasn't surprised when he heard damen speak again as if he'd been thinking of the right words to say.

"the woman you were talking to earlier..."

the idea of it stung, cold and cruel, but he was no idiot. there was only one reason to bring her up here, now. "she's been in this bed, too?" the words tasted foul and sour on his tongue. it was a misdeed that only damen would be guilty of. laurent knew it was unusual to be a prince who had fucked so few, but he still found it distasteful. perhaps because she was a woman. he could feel rather than hear damen sigh. 

"she's tricky."

having his accusation neither confirmed nor denied made laurent wrinkle his nose. " _tricky_? have you fucked her or not?"

" _yes_ ," damen hissed, and it seemed almost as if he were embarrassed to admit it—more likely peeved at being forced to, but laurent would spin whatever fragile narrative he could. "i'm just—yes. just be careful with her."

"how many other jilted lovers do you have here? could you make a list? with descriptions? i can have aristokles drill me on them, so i know who to be extra careful around. is it just the blonde ones?" laurent was huffing, but it was a facade, and damen now knew to see through them.

"just the one," he grumbled.

"and why aren't you marrying her?"

"because i met you."

—————

****

**THE** next morning, laurent rose committed to a new cause. laced in the palest blue, he practiced his most cherubic face in the looking glass, and then sprung his way down to court with his hands neatly clasped behind his back, guards in tow.

to fit in here, he knew he would have to be brave, which was not necessarily a quality that came naturally. given the choice, he would hole up and read or spend time riding, not flounce around doing his best to charm and guile foreign courtiers. doing so—being open to approach anyone and display brilliance—took active, conscious courage.

his first approach was rather a warm-up. three slaves walked in a neat row behind a potentially well-dressed achelon man with a stock whip in hand, and laurent stopped in front of the parade with wide eyes, clapping his hands together enthusiastically. "good morning!" he cried cheerily in achelon, beaming. "would one of you be so kind as to tell me where i might find the lady jokaste?"

the man with the whip regarded laurent as one might a lunatic, with a brow raised so high it nearly disappeared off the top of his bald head. but he turned to the trio behind him and snapped: "go and find her." to which laurent clasped his hands together in thanks. the slaves, subservient to a fault, bowed and split off in different directions on their hunt.

it was then just laurent, the bald man, and the prince's guard, and laurent was forced to keep performing. "that is a lovely whip," he offered, keenly aware that the man had not spoken a word directly to him yet. "whipmaking is an ancient craft in vere, as i'm sure you know. but i suspect that akielon whips are as high-quality. may i?"

he extended his hand expectantly, fingers wide, unwavering in the several _very_ long moments he was forced to wait before feeling the long handle rest in his palm.

it was of entirely pedestrian quality.

"lovely!" he repeated, pretending to give it a thorough inspection. the handle was greasy, and the braided thong was undernourished the leather dull and cracking. it was not well-cared for or used often, clearly. while laurent thought it was preferable that it not be used regularly on slaves, he also thought it a pity for a tool to never be of use. it was rendered from rough grained cowskin, an ugly, cheap material. "the cowskin is a very smart touch," he beamed with a wink, "for durability. i am sure it will serve you for many more years to come."

he wondered, standing there, smiling like a fucking fool, whether he was speaking patran by mistake. but then, the slave master extended his hand to take the whip back, and offered laurent the most paltry of smiles. they warmed slowly here for it being such a hot climate, he thought. "they only last about a year here," he said in his gravelly voice, and laurent did his best impression of a man taken aback by a deliciously scandalous secret.

"well, you must let me send you one of our veretian handles. we have a new system, you see, thongs that you can replace when they wear out, but a handle molded to your very palm. it makes regular use easier on the hand. the point is _not_ to torture the whipper, is it not?" he could not have been more jolly or conspiratorial if he tried. it was barely moving the needle.

one of the slaves trotted back into the collonnade, prostrating immediately in a way that laurent found wholly unbecoming of a human being. he enjoyed being lavished over, but this kind of subservience always curled his lip. he fought against that instinct now, doing his best to train his expression into one of haughtiness.

"speak," the slave master commanded, and from the floor, the slave said tremulously, "the lady jokaste is in the garden of the euphrosyne."

upon asking sweetly for directions on how to get to the garden of the euphrosyne, which laurent had either not been shown by damen or was too infatuated to remember, and asking even more sweetly for the name of the slave master, the veretian assembly swished off.

he had not been shown this garden, and it seemed upon their arrival to be populated solely by women. this did not deter laurent from striding in along the row of cala lilies to his mark, sitting on a low bench speaking in a low voice to another woman just as lovely and impolite looking.

he cleared his throat, and both women looked up. "good morning," he breezed, picking up his sweet tone just where he'd left off with the slave master. "lady jokaste, i was hoping you would do me the pleasure of accompanying me on a walk. my host has done a rather inadequate job of showing me around the palace. he didn't show me this lovely outpost, for instance."

jokaste, in all her tawny insolence, smiled tightly up at him. "that is because the garden of the euphrosyne is for the fairer sex alone."

but laurent—who was still flanked by his two very male guards—just leaned in in an impish way, hands clasped behind his back. "it is a good thing that i'm so fair, then." with a pop, he stood back up, extending his hand. "please. it would be my most plenary honor."

when he felt her cool hand in his, it felt like a victory, although he suddenly had the intense urge to be wearing a glove now that he knew where those lovely hands had been.

luckily, they could walk without the pretense of a tour: she made no effort and he made no inquisitions, simply let her hold the crook of his elbow and gently steer him like a rowboat through a canal, his guards floating in their wake close behind.

"i find it curious that you've sought me out," she mused. she seemed to constantly speak under her breath, and laurent got the distinct feeling that she was telling secrets even when there was nothing clandestine to her words.

he furrowed his brow down at her. "do you?" he doubted that was the case. "i think you know exactly why i've sought you out."

"you feel threatened?"

this was as absurd a suggestion as they came, and he scoffed with a good-natured little laugh. "no, my lady. i am threatened by no one. if it is not apparent to you by now that he is mine, i'm sure it will be in the coming days. i was not brought here to be made a fool of, or rejected. but i would hope that the funny position we find ourselves in would not prevent us from becoming friends." he was matter-of-fact, his sweetness no longer so put-upon, but there was no malice in his words, either.

"you have stolen my suitor," she said with only barely restrained negativity, "and would now like to be friends?"

but he paused their walking and blinked down at her in a keen way. "was he courting you?" there was a difference, a worthwhile one, between being fucked and being courted. she knew it too by the way her expression faltered.

"he would have."

"ah!" he gave a little shrug and kept walking, pleasant smile on his face once more. "then i have stolen nothing. i'm afraid, my lady—and," he paused, "you _are_ of noble birth?"

she snorted delicately. "i am no whore, if that's what you insinuate."

"how obfuscatory," he said with a flourish. "i insinuate nothing. but it is the sorry truth that no matter how noble your birth, i am a prince. and perhaps he might have courted you if he had not met me. so yes: i would be your friend. we do have a true overpopulation of attractive noblemen in vere. i would be happy to make introductions, if that would lessen the heartache."

"it doesn't bode well for him," she said frankly, "that you find him so easily replaced." but he furrowed his brow and gave his head a wrought little shake.

"i don't find him easily replaced. i hope that _you_ might find him replaceable, and not easily. i said an overpopulation, not a watering-down. it is no reflection on him that there are so many other strong prospects in the world today."

"and yet you, i've heard, showed interest in none of them. your chastity is renowned." there was a snideness to her voice that said _chastity_ was not an enviable virtue to her, or perhaps her entire country. achelons were known for their hot blood, after all.

laurent simply did his best impression of an elegant, porcelain-skinned ascetic—which was to say, not really an impression at all. he looked down his nose at her and hoped his serene expression didn't betray the fact that he had been unchaste six times over the course of the previous day. she spoke before he could, though, with a rudeness that reminded laurent keenly of damen. "you can't be a virgin, though. nothing would confuse and bore him more."

"unfortunately," he sighed, examining his nail beds, "it seems you might not know him as well as you think. i guarantee you he is neither confused nor bored."

it seemed, strangely, that causticity unfurled her the way that tenderness did to most women: she pushed, he parried, and she seemed to gain respect for him. a part of him was unnerved by it: they were as different as they were similar, as if everything about one had been slightly shifted. her skin and eyes were darker than his; she held her shoulders forward and up so that her collarbone dipped especially deep, while his were always back and down; her arrogance read more as jealousy than an excess of confidence. he saw her wear down over the course of perhaps a quarter of an hour, and she was, if nothing else, a good sport. she lost graciously, again and again, until there was no more hostility in her manner. he convinced her that he was a better comrade than damen was a lover with the right word here, the right look there. and he found that when she was not trying to knock him down a peg, she was rather lovely.

they talked about horses, of course: she preferred a coach, had fallen as a child and lacked confidence as a rider—he would lend her his sweetest mount and they could go out together. she pointed out courtiers hither and tither, gossiped about them behind an elegant, raised hand: kosmas, hyperemenetra's younger brother; xanthedon, a pearl baron; hippomedes, second son of adymus, a "professional lecher;" agariste, known for her red hair and empty head. he asked, she answered. she barbed, he countered. when laurent's guard changed for the second time and they were invited to dinner, both thought jord was playing a trick on them, for surely nine hours could not have gone by.

it was only after dinner that laurent found himself jarred back to reality, a strange reminder that he had started the day with an adversary. damen had bid him wait by the low fountain at the mouth of the gardens and he had, leaning against a cool column, watching the stars through the eucalyptus leaves when he felt a touch at his elbow. but when he turned, it was not damen who had tapped him.

"will you walk with me?"

nikandros had never asked laurent anything of the sort, and while his first instinct was suspicion, he swallowed it. he was not about to be murdered, here, by this man. if he were to die in ios it would be in some far more dramatic manner, and he doubted nikandros had the nerve. so they walked.

"i noticed that you spent the day with jokaste," nikandros emptied into the silence, which was helpful, since laurent hadn't the faintest idea what to talk about. good—the man had come with a topic in mind.

"i did." he looked sidelong at nikandros and saw nothing revealing in the man's forward-facing gaze.

"you might want to be careful with her."

laurent huffed a rueful laugh, clasping his hands behind his back neatly. "damen called her 'tricky.' tell me, i get the sense that i'm being warned about something. i thought it would be prudent to... mend any ruffled feathers."

to laurent's great surprise, nikandros gave something away: he bobbed his head in surprise. "i just didn't know whether you knew. but it seems you've figured it out."

"he told me," laurent replied, and he couldn't help his visible frustration, although for once it wasn't directed straight at nikandros' heart. he stopped short, an effort to force nikandros to meet his gaze. "he told me most and she filled in the rest. she told me that he wrote her a letter. the same day he arrived at chastillon. full of his sincerest regrets and well-wishes, telling her he had found someone else."

clearly exasperated with his best friend, nikandros rolled his eyes, refusing to stop his walk. "as soon as he realized you weren't going to have his tongue cut out. he didn't even know you."

laurent balked at the perceived insinuation. "you think he decided to court me just because i'm beautiful?" he had to stride long to catch up now, and felt like a child chasing after a strict tutor.

but nikandros looked like he'd been defeated, deflated, like he couldn't bare to pretend otherwise: "i think that's why he decided to. but it's not why you're here."

"then you think i'm here because i'm 'tricky,' too."

"i think you're here because he loves you." and, curtly, he nodded, veering off the path on his own, offering laurent a whisper of a smile and a perfunctory, polite "goodnight."

laurent hadn't seen the surrender at marlas in person, but he imagined this to be how surrenders went.

—————

****

**ONE** of the best things about being relatively unknown at the achelon court was that no one seemed to clamor to be seen speaking to him, and so he found that when damen was off doing other things besides laurent—which was rare—he and his men more or less had the run of the palace. and thus, laurent spent his time buoyed, either by the presence of the crown prince at his side or at least two ferocious veretian guards.

olivér and aimeric both liked horses—and aimeric the company, laurent was certain but had kept to himself—so they would ride often with jord and laurent, and orlant would come because he liked the gossip, and louis because he was eager to be a part of a group of favorites. the royal stables were outside the walls of the palace, and thus a larger guard was necessary.

"you know," orlant began one morning, as they tacked their horses themselves. the grooms they'd brought were excellent, but laurent generally preferred that they be tending to things like forage quality and managing ulcers from the journey, and these men were capable of tacking up themselves. and certainly laurent had to cinch épine's girth, since she bloated her belly and would only release it once he'd mounted and the tack had become dangerously loose. "i've been thinking. the prince is getting fucked by an achelon." he spoke as if laurent wasn't there, which had everyone stilling, including laurent. "we're going to be here a while, based on how things look. i think... that one, maybe, for me?" he pointed vaguely with his crop at a tall young man, not a stable boy but a member of theomedes' guard. he was inspecting a stud horse across the yard, and he was very pretty, with black hair that shone almost blue in the sunlight and sly green eyes. 

laurent broke the ensuing silence with the sharp _snap_ of his hand connecting with horseflesh, his palm slapping the filly's belly to jolt her into exhaling so that he could tighten the girth further. lazily, he glanced up, immediately meeting jord's stare. but he liked the tension in the air between the five of them, and would not give up his position to jord: he just stared at him, face completely blank, and then resumed adjusting his stirrup. he did not need an achelon, laurent thought, and it took all of his willpower not to smile at that thought.

finally, out of sheer benevolence, he gave in: "well, i'm the only one who can tell you whether he fucks as well as _my_ achelon."

orlant's bearded face twisted into a smile, then a gravelly laugh, and all five of them were laughing, laurent feeling his cheeks pink in delight at the joke's tidy landing.

jord automatically went to hold épine while laurent mounted: she was still alarmingly badly behaved, and laurent suspected it would take her more than three months and one good race to tame her fully, if it were even possible. more likely, she would always be difficult. the achelon soldier at the center of orlant's joke hurried out of her way as she shot forward a few feet, hopping like a bunny while laurent found his seat and his second stirrup.

"hope it's a little like that," orlant crowed after him as laurent pulled her nose to her chin, backed her up, and began winding her in a series of tiny counter-clockwise circles while the rest of the men mounted handily.

"rude and hard to mount?" laurent said through gritted teeth, a grimace and a grin in one. "that sounds more like what my achelon likes. you'd have to talk to him about whether he enjoys it—but—a little like me—" he reversed épine in her circle, and she leaned so hard against the bit that he was sure either his own hands or her mouth would rip, "—he just keeps getting a leg over the fucking thing." he heard jord's disbelieving breath: his captain was clearly in awe of how easily he was joking with the men, but laurent knew that his words had weight beyond just bawdy humor. 

"surely he doesn't whip you as often as you have to whip that witch?" louis ventured, clearly keen to see if the conversation was open to more participants than just orlant and the prince, but hesitant to have his tongue cut out, as orlant should have been.

laurent looked up at the sky pensively, as if the tufted achelon clouds could give him the answer. "it's not one of the things he's begged for." his eyes wheeled back down to louis, and the rest of his men mounted and ready, and gave them a loose shrug. they might have been talking about equations or blueberry pie. "but it's only been two weeks," he added with a little pout, protesting an imaginary slight to his lover. "i wouldn't discount it yet." and, fist still full of reins, he kicked épine sharply with his little rowel spurs, and the yard lit with the clatter of twenty hooves, the prince and his companions off through the streets of ios on their morning ride.

in arles, there was a direct route out of the city for palace use only, fenced on both sides with great copper gates that had oxidized over the years. it was where palace deliveries came through, where the family's coaches passed, for safety and for speed rather than the pomp and display of riding through town. in ios, it seemed, there was no need for such discretion, because there was little ceremony in riding through the city streets. despite their fine dress and finer horses, they were rather free to travel unmolested through ios on their way to the city outskirts. they were tourists, a foreign lord and his guard, not even the only group of visiting emissaries in ios. boring to the men and women going about their days.

"what do you make of this court? haphazard and full of whores and lowborn tycoons," laurent said to olivér, who had ridden up to flank him. his mount, a gelding with the nature of a puppy, had good rapport with épine, and they walked calmly together.

"it cannot be indicative of a culture of values," olivér tsked. he could always be relied upon to turn his nose up at any sign of dishonor or scandal, and thus was generally a delight to gossip with, since he noticed every one. "a courtesan at the king's right hand. and he kept her so openly, even when the queen was alive. it turns the stomach to think a bastard was the heir presumptive."

"vile," laurent said plainly. he was only half-committed to the conversation: the other half of his attention was on the city that they rode through.

the smaller streets were just dirt roads covered in straw, whitewashed buildings stacked close together, but they were neater than the cobblestoned alleys in arles, which broke often and were usually grouted with thick mud. it took them several twisting blocks to make their way to the main road, which was paved in stone, flanked by grander homes and buildings, all with matching white marble facades. of course, the finest establishments and villas were behind them, further up the hill towards the palace, which loomed over them like a giant white scepter, red banners undulating in the breeze off the sea. the views from his apartments in the palace were breathtaking, and he was sure that property close by was highly sought-after, further from the rabble of the lower city. 

frankly, laurent liked the common parts of any place. he did not need to _linger_ in them, but the streets were lively with noise and color. they rode past a dye house where wool and cotton were being dyed with woad and turmeric, and past a row of workshops that seemed to be tasked only with the carving of statues from massive hunks of marble. a sprawling market intersected the main road close to the city gates, the smells of olives and roasted lamb so pungent that it became unappetizing.

"he is in kesus, is he not?"

laurent felt himself jarred out of his distraction by olivér's casual continuation of the conversation. "who? oh—the brother?"

"the bastard."

"he is," laurent mused, lips in a hard line, nodding. he remembered what damen had said about kastor: _ruled by his emotions_. "he is kyros there, i guess. they'll give it to anybody." 

"he'll have a chip on his shoulder," olivér said frankly. laurent liked him: he was very plainspoken, not as calculated or opaque as jord, and he was exceptionally pragmatic. he took the king's guard's oath very seriously: he was happy to be here protecting laurent instead of auguste if that was what his king asked of him. laurent suspected all of auguste's men thought of it as a privilege, to be trusted to accompany laurent to a kingdom where he was only really welcomed by one member of the royal family. it was a more important—and dangerous—posting than protecting auguste in his own palace.

laurent considered kastor's reality: auguste had been quick to frame him as a good man, because auguste had lived his entire life knowing he would be king, and knew the gravity that might come with having that expectation taken away. but laurent, who had never thought about being king at all, had less pity. "he hates that he's a second son now. but i'm here to tell you," he canted his head as if sharing a secret, "it's really not bad. i have all the pleasures of a king with none of the responsibilities. i could have been anything i wanted. if kastor doesn't see the benefits of his position yet, i'm sure i can help him to."

auguste had been blind on this subject, but as soon as laurent remembered kastor even existed, he had been thinking of him. he was not a gatekeeper, but an entirely different kind of chess piece, and needed to be accounted for. "it amazes me," olivér mused, "how a man could have so much and still want more."

laurent peered sideways at him. "your father is the lord of toutaine." it was not as if olivér were a lowborn nobody like half of laurent's guard. he was as spoiled as aimeric, had the same haughty look, although his nose was crooked and his hair was the color of hay, and his noble face furrowed.

"and i want nothing more than to serve your family, your highness. would i kill my father and my brother to inherit, what, wheat?" he shrugged, his gold spaulders glittering in the sunlight, which seemed to hit the white buildings and make everything infinitely brighter. laurent was constantly squinting. "my life is more fulfilling in this guard than it could ever be as the lord of anything. my brother will never ride through the streets of ios with a prince, sword at his side. he'll never sail in the kind of fleet we came here in. he'll never spar with the best achelon soldiers, and he won't sleep with an achelon, either." laurent could tell it took olivér extra effort to mention something as lewd as lovemaking. laurent was sometimes amazed this man had fought at marlas with how easily his sensibilities were offended. "my life is an adventure. i suspect perhaps prince damianos will look to you to bring adventure to his life. i think that's the way with your brother and the queen. she brings play to even the most tedious of duties."

laurent blinked. they came to the city gates, the rest of his men flanking them, jord at his left side, his presence comforting as always, even when he was feeling cheeky. "if that's the case," he said, clearly having overheard—they did ride tight, "do you think maybe the achelon bit off more than he can chew?" he offered to the group, and laurent shrugged. orlant gave an overly enthusiastic salute to the gate guards, who rolled their eyes, muttering amongst themselves on the parapet. laurent looked at aimeric, who at the far right end of the line simply stared off into the distance. _he_ had bitten off more than he could chew once, too. laurent swallowed his own lewd comment about how much damen could fit into his mouth: it would have been show for the men, and it would have been unfair to aimeric.

"i think he wants someone to tell him what to do," he said instead, leading them through the open gates: just past the city wall was nothing but rolling hills of golden grasses, speckled with towering green cypress trees. the road was wide and unpaved but neat, dotted with wagons, merchants traveling south from the rest of the achelon peninsula. "he has it now." with a kick of his spurs, which épine did not need, he led them down the road at a sprightly canter, leaving the city behind them in a plume of golden dust.

—————

****

**LAURENT** had never seen jord and aimeric together before, he realized quickly on their ride. not like this, when they were at ease and among friends. he racked his brain: when he took dinners with the guard in the barracks, had they been sitting together? when jord was walking at his side and they passed through a door where aimeric was posted, had he missed a sideways glance? but now, after what he'd seen in his fever dream on the ship, he paid close attention. they didn't ride together, although laurent stuck close to olivér: perhaps if jord knew the prince was with one of the captains, he would relax a little. but jord seemed to be having a fine enough time trying to coach louis on his seat, which was sloppy—but effective. he had busy hands and legs but he got where he was going. and aimeric, dreamy-eyed, let his horse graze at any green grasses she could find.

the hills around the palace were safe, damen had reassured laurent and the guards, and laurent could see why: as they chased each other around in great circles and jumped ridges and a little stream, several different quartets of achelon soldiers rode past them, riding close until they recognized the guard's liveries and trotted off. laurent wondered if these hills were always so well-sentried, but preferred the idea that damen had added more patrols for the express purpose of keeping laurent and his men unmolested. they rode along the stream, following it into a grove of olive trees that seemed to go on forever. some rows were newly planted, but along the banks of the creek the trees were taller and older, a willow anchoring the sandy soil every now and then. they stopped in a shady spot and let the horses drink, dismounting and drinking from the clear stream themselves, too. aimeric made a little gagging sound, his pretty button nose wrinkling. "it tastes like metal," he whined, and there: laurent saw it, jord's exasperated, fond smile. his rough hand in the creek water, flicking a flurry of droplets in aimeric's direction. laurent felt a pang of jealousy, although at whom, he wasn't sure.

"i like it here," orlant offered, tying his and louis' horses to the trunk of a slender tree before sitting on the creek bank, pulling a sizable flask from his hip pocket. it was just on the late side of noon, but laurent didn't mind, especially when olivér and jord declined. laurent took it, though, and had the same reaction to the liquor that aimeric had to the creek water, and orlant laughed in his barking, gravelly way. he really was one of the most uncivilized men laurent had met: it was why he liked him.

"you can stay, then, if i do," laurent said, rolling his tongue around in his mouth uncomfortably from the burn of the alcohol, and he sat down beside orlant.

the guard took a hearty swig from his flask, and offered it to aimeric, who politely refused and sat beside jord on the bank opposite laurent. ah, he thought. there it was again.

"will you stay?" asked orlant.

laurent peered up into the canopy of the olive trees, willing himself not to stare at jord and aimeric. he didn't want to spook them or be caught looking. "i think, unless something awful happens. there are plenty of hurdles left to get over before a betrothal. but i certainly am fighting for it like i want it."

orlant sighed, laying back against the bank and flinging his forearm to his forehead histrionically. "royalty. too much protocol: i can't even keep track."

olivér, who understood the intricacies of a court wedding—and had been at auguste's side during his—was happy to explain, which saved laurent the effort. this was better, since laurent was about to tell orlant that it was better to have a complicated courtship than be sold to the man next door for two goats and a sack of tomato seeds.

"how are you getting on, your highness? with theomedes," he clarified, and laurent stifled a yawn behind his hand, groaning in response.

"it is exhausting and demoralizing," laurent admitted. "negotiating on behalf of myself. the prince is the furthest thing from my mind when his father is pushing me on line item after line item. politics and finance. it feels like squabbling over toys. who will pay for what, where the wedding will be, where we will live and when and for how long. and then he'll try to sneak things past me. the last draft his grand treasurer gave me had a ten-year plan for the handover of delfeur in it, thinking i wouldn't read through the whole treatise. i was incensed: he thought it was a good laugh. it can be easy to forget why i'm working so hard for it when damen isn't there."

he propped his elbow on his knee and his cheek on the heel of his palm, which he knew gave him the look of a petulant child. he didn't really care. "but i will wear him down. his court adores me more every day. auguste wanted to fight to see that damen could protect me. theomedes is smarter than i thought. he's holding out for the same reason auguste did, testing my strengths. he'll approve the terms soon enough, and then we will be betrothed. and then, maybe in winter, married. winter weddings are preferable here, something about the moon. and they're at night. we may do it the achelon way, but in... marlas." he could see olivér's frown. "the idea was not mine. it was damen's. a show of unity and forgiveness. theomedes hated the idea, too. but it's not my point to negotiate, and it won't happen in arles, or chastillon, which would have been my choice. so marlas or here. who cares?"

the quiet hung in the air for a few moments: the creek was so slow moving and calm that it barely made a whisper, and the primary melody in the air was the treble of bugs in the grass, singing the song of sunshine.

"and we'll all live here?" aimeric asked it; laurent spared him a quick glance, and saw that between them, jord and aimeric's fingers were brushing.

"yes, no, i don't know," laurent shrugged. "it will be volunteers only. but i hope that many of you will volunteer. you would be leaving vere behind, but then, so would i. i would imbue this court with as many veretians as i could."

orlant sighed beside him. "i'm in. weather's nicer here." in his periphery, laurent saw aimeric and jord exchange a glance, and heard the younger pipe up.

"me, too."

it went unsaid that wherever laurent went, jord would follow.

—————

****

**ARISTOKLES** was far from a slave. but he was still a member of laurent's household, a well-paid one, and it was clear now that they had arrived in ios where his loyalties lay. for a man who seemed to have equal vitriol for all kingdoms of the known world, the philosopher's time in vere must have charmed him somehow. he was still achelon in all ways: the cut of his beard, the drama of his pallium, but he seemed only comfortable by laurent's side. and he was a canny ally, laurent found.

"i can't make heads or tails of this place," he murmured. it was on the sunny side of midnight, the sky rich and inky and absurdly clear. astronomy, aristokles had insisted, could only be studied under the clear skies of achelos. _what about delfeur?_ laurent had asked, and aristokles had shaken his head no. _ah, so that yard that the border spans makes a difference._ laurent had been facetious, disparaging, and aristokles had simply nodded. a horrible, curmudgeonly creature. laurent sat on the marble terrace floor, legs sprawled, graphite in hand. he was to make a star chart, which was not aided by aristokles' insistence that, when laurent could not locate a constellation that his tutor vaguely pointed at, the prince was blind and should just give up learning anything. so he wheedled for gossip instead.

"the sky is up, and the dirt is down," aristokles grunted. he sat in a proper chair, his pallium acting as a great wool blanket despite the balmy air. he was always cold, and laurent had worried he wouldn't survive a winter in arles.

"mmm. you'd think so, wouldn't you? in vere, it is that way. why does this court love its whores and bastards so much?" olivér had been dismissive, insulted by their mere presence; laurent found it distasteful, but he could not just write it off as the behavior of barbarians. he had to learn why.

"that's all it has." aristokles shrugged his narrow shoulders. he was built like a praying mantis, an overlarge head with triangular white hair, a body of thin sticks with a rather rotund gut.

laurent tsked, doodling in the corner of his parchment, drawing a lily of the valley. "that's not true. they have a king and prince with royal blood. there's no reason to fill the gaps with common scrub. in vere, we would have an empty court rather than a king share a dais with a courtesan. and there would be no bastard son of the king, and if there were, he would be promised nothing. he would be lucky not to be drowned as a baby."

he heard a hum and looked up: he hated when aristokles wore that smug expression. it meant he had just walked into a dressing-down. "and achelons are the savages," the old man sniped, and laurent could admit he had set himself up for that. that didn't keep him from scowling.

"do you have any interest in advising me, or are you just content to sit there and scold me?"

"is there a difference? this is the advice you would have gotten from your father, if he were alive."

laurent sneered. "i can guarantee you that my father would never have advocated for the corruption of the achelon court. he would—"

he paused, blinking dumbly at his own realization. "he would never have let me come here. he would have had me marry a stable boy rather than the future king of achelos. he would have killed damen for daring to look sideways at me." he felt like he had just been rained on and left damp out in the cold. "he would have hated all of this. treachery and backroom alliances."

"he would have advocated for war," aristokles grumbled. "the slaughter of thousands of men, the burning of cities." he had never met laurent's father, but it didn't take much imagination to make these assumptions. and regardless of what laurent remembered of his father, he knew them to be true.

"which is worse?"

aristokles laughed, and coughed, as it was rare for him to chuckle and seemed to tax his miserable lungs. in another rare moment, he looked down to meet laurent's gaze. his eyes were a beautiful green, visible even in the lamplight that glowed from inside, and they were as sly as they were weary. "the lesser of two evils? what makes one lesser? war is simple in its evil. politics complex. there is no answer."

an irritating response, but the old man had, in some ways, lost his ability to niggle laurent. when they engaged thus, he was too focused on the discussion to let frustration sideline him. "but we must make the choice."

"damianos has been raised for war. and unlike your brother, he has lost nothing to it. he doesn't fear it the way that your brother does. will it make him a warmonger? who can say? you, on the other hand, have been raised for pragmatism and politics. who is stronger? a viper or a lion?"

"why is everyone so quick to compare me to a snake?" he said it with a wrinkle to his nose. "do you mean to say i'm fucked, that whether i love him or leave this place, nothing is certain? or that our natures will always collide? or that nothing we do matters in the end?"

aristokles smiled ruefully. "the only thing certain is the chaos of men. don't you think that these two kingdoms would go to war if your glue did not bind them? does your nature collide with your brother's? he is a lion, too, you know."

"you don't advise me," laurent sighed, rubbing his cheek with his palm. "you take the long route, always, and ask me leading questions until the only thing left is the right answer. your allowance is not calculated by the hour, you know."

"what have you learned in your meetings with theomedes?"

"that he is obstinate and immature."

"no. what have you _learned_?"

laurent groaned, letting his graphite fall to the parchment. "that he is short on money. that achelos is infinitely rich in soldiers and poor on funds to outfit them the way he'd like to. that he wants veretian training for his soldiers, too. that they have put themselves in debt building their navy, leaving them weak on the ground. but that men want to fight here more than they do in vere. that the honor and skill of warfare is a salary in itself here."

"and?"

"that aegina struggles with patras over taxes in the port at alvra. achelos owes patras nothing and torgier knows it. he has made it all but impossible for achelon ships to dock at alvra, and allows less to pass on the road. patras is producing its own olives now, or buying them from us."

"and?"

"patras will not be an easy get for me. that was an alliance i passed up on without knowing." laurent made a face. "when auguste didn't trust me enough to tell me the purpose of my trip."

"you would rather the second son of patras than the future king of akielos?" aristokles coughed a bout of laughter again, and with his long olive wood walking stick, he rapped at the parchment that laurent had abandoned. "your great heron is wrong."

"it doesn't even _look_ like a heron. whoever decided it was a heron was blind."

"he was my mentor, agrippos, and he _was_ blind in the end. but not when he charted the stars."

laurent squinted up at the night sky. "i will go blind if you force me to draw at night."

"you would be smarter blind. less staring at your new pet prince." he at least spoke treasonously in ancient artesian, which made the insult sting less. the old man was as mischievous as laurent when he wanted to be.

laurent hummed. "i would be smarter," he mused, returning his graphite to parchment and beginning to chart again in neat, delicate lines. "sometimes i think he is so beautiful that i should gouge my eyes out to save myself the heartache of simply looking at him." and he smiled to himself when he heard aristokles spit in defiance of the romance of it all.

—————

****

**ARISTOKLES** had laurent up until nearly dawn with his drilling of politics and star mapping, and he was drowsy all through the next morning, low on sleep. reminded by theomedes' master of the treasury that they would have another review of terms that evening, he had turned to jord, eyes nearly crossed. "i need to take a nap, i think."

he fell into bed fully clothed, and fell into sleep almost immediately, the sweet sea breeze tousling his hair until he dozed. but his dream was fitful.

he was in the palace at arles. the light was strange and pale, as if at dawn or dusk, but when he peered through the grand windows, he saw no sun or moon in the sky, and with a start realized there was no arles at all. the city had disappeared, replaced with a towering black forest like the kind that grew far to the north. dense pine trees standing at attention like soldiers as far as the eye could see. alarmed, he picked up the pace of his steps on the checkerboard floor, but his panic grew at every turn: there was no one there. not a soul in the palace. no guards, no servants, no courtiers.

he ran to the wing of the royal apartments, skidding to a halt as the doors came into view: they were barricaded, a great log jammed across them horizontally. panicked, laurent ran to them, tried to dislodge it: it was far too heavy and well-secured for a single man to move. he called for his brother, his mother, desperately: the barricade was meant to be on the other side of the doors, to prevent entry. out here, it prevented exit, effectively locking the royal family in—but no one answered laurent's cries.

not until a great pair of hands grabbed him from behind, slipping beneath his open jacket, groping his belly possessively. and his uncle's distantly familiar voice growled his name.

in a moment, he had his dagger out and pressed to his uncle's throat, expecting the fair, honeyed skin and neatly kept beard. but, heaving a gasp, the world seemed to turn upside down: the color of the light changed, the quality of the air, the roughness of the hands on his bare skin. the drop of blood his dagger had drawn was as red as any man's, but the skin was different, the black scruff different...

damen was frozen, his breath coming erratic and craggy, as if he were trying not to breathe too deeply lest his adams apple press harder against the blade. his hands, splayed possessively over laurent's belly, began a slow, calculated withdrawal: they were trembling.

it took laurent a moment. he could not calm down: there was just a moment's depression between panic and horror, one misery trading itself in for another. damen had snuck in to rouse him from his nap. laurent sucked in a stricken breath, a gasp, and as soon as his lungs were full, his face crumpled.

at the first sight of laurent's grief, damen's fingers were on his, prying them gently from the grip on the knife. his throat was bleeding, but not badly enough to worry him, or at least not badly enough for him to attend to it. laurent, meanwhile, could barely think, or could barely hear over the noise of his own thoughts, the screaming voices inside of his head. luck. luck was all that had kept damen alive, kept laurent from murdering him. this was no broken jaw or missing tooth, and the terror that laurent felt was nothing like what had crippled him after he'd maimed aimeric for a simple kiss. his hands, freed of the knife, came to cover his mouth instinctively, as if they could predict the rasping sob that bubbled up from his throat.

he heard something so kind that he thought it must have been an illusion then. _are you alright?_ damen said it over, and over, and over, and laurent could not offer him an answer beyond hysterics. more than a bad dream, more than an act of violence: he stifled a sob in his humid palms. what would the consequences have been if he had slit damen's throat? what would auguste have to do to extract him safely from ios, if he could at all? and then what would be his fate? locked in a tower at aquitart, a violent madman. inbreeding in the royal family, they'd say. or trying to avenge his father, he had never gotten past watching the life drain from aleron's eyes. he had come to this country as a gift, a beacon of peace, six feet and two inches of treaty. auguste had trusted him with that, because auguste didn't know laurent's madness. 

the door burst in with a sound that felt like it cracked laurent's skull open. he knew it was jord because of the force and the voice, although words sounded like unstructured strings of vowels in a foreign language. he saw damen touch his throat and draw away bloody fingers. he saw jord pick up the dagger and wipe the blade on his jacket and hide it in a pocket. and then, through the distortion, he could hear real worlds.

"he's dead, laurent. _i_ killed him. you know it, don't you?" jord asked questions because he knew it was how to shock laurent's mind back into functioning, and it worked, but only in uneven, violent bursts. he caged his fingers over his lips and wheezed, wide eyes trying to focus on one thing at a time: jord's strong nose. the lines in the corners of his eyes, which reminded laurent of auguste. and the feeling of jord's hands, unmistakably his, on laurent's shoulders, steadying him or shaking him. he was trembling too hard to know the difference.

he did know, and the acknowledgement of it broke him apart, made him feel like his feet were on separate ice floes drifting further apart. he'd known since the day his uncle died in front of him, known since jord took his hand and led him away from that chamber, where he had seen nothing but hate and death and violence. but there had never been a word shared between them about it, as if silence was an implicit part of the act: when you assassinate a man, you don't talk much about it. laurent didn't need to know many assassins to know that.

jord—an assassin, laurent realized with a twitch—pressed on. "the maid got me the poison. i killed the maid. a boy from the kitchens gave it to him, and i killed the boy from the kitchens, too." laurent felt bile on his tongue and retched dryly, but jord kept going. he seemed insistent that laurent hear him, even if his words weren't coddling. "you're not in danger anymore. and you won't be, as long as i'm around."

laurent finally found speech pushing its way up his throat, and when it came it felt feral and ragged. " _i know_." hitting his temple with the heel of his palm hard, trying to knock the scarred parts out of his head like disloging water from one's ear. "and i'm still like this. why did i think," he gasped, "that i could do this? get the boats. we need to leave."

suddenly, damen came into focus again, although there were two and a half of him through laurent's furious tears. "what?" he objected, "leave? stop." he had been sidelined for jord's confessional and clearly didn't appreciate having been interrupted at all: bravely, he pressed a hand to each veretian's chest to keep them apart. "no one is going _anywhere_. think you could do _what_?" his eyes, which had been unnervingly wide moments ago, were narrowed at laurent. for the first time, he felt damen's anger focused at him, and he hated it. it made him want to fight, claw open the little scratch on damen's stubbled neck and really give him something to be angry about.

"pretend not to be a cripple!" he yelled it, hoarse, knowing he looked crazed. it didn't matter. they would have to run now. "a fucking madman."

his hands had fallen from his mouth and were balled into white fists, nails cutting into his palms. no matter how hard he squeezed them, it didn't feel tight enough, and he had the sudden mad craving to feel all of his fingers broken, to feel a pain that might overwhelm him or blind him. it would transport him from _this_ , turn everyone's attention to something else wrong with him. something that could be splinted and fixed.

the man in front of him wasn't the easily acquiescent one he had come to know in vere, or the roguishly arrogant one he had revealed himself to be, too, in achelos. he was one inundated with laurent's own venom and razor's edge, someone who had lost his patience.

"so what?" it was not the response he'd expected, nor jord: they wore matching expressions of distrust and disgust. damen, seeing he had to be even more explicit, threw his hands up in the air. " _so what_? so what happened, hmm? your uncle was poisoned. i remember. a one-man cholera outbreak. so?" he shrugged wildly. he looked as crazed as laurent felt, and it was physically intimidating, even with jord standing by the side of the bed between them. it wasn't that laurent felt threatened: he had just never seen damen's anger, and it was big.

"jord," he said with a jerky gesture towards laurent's captain, "killed him. because he raped you, didn't he? often, you said. and you think that ruined you, is that it?"

he said it so dismissively that laurent felt hot rage in his stomach, which overpowered anything cold he might have felt at being so obviously found out. damen had figured it out long ago, he realized, and felt duped, and then used, and then _vile_ , filthy. he'd known when they'd made love, maybe, most likely, at least the last time, and maybe the first time? laurent wanted to retch. he'd been so much more exposed than he'd known.

"like everything to you," laurent growled, "oversimplified." but it was like a paper arrow hitting the scratched breastplate in damen's stark armoire. meaningless and ineffective, a hollow insult that made no mark.

"it seems pretty simple to me. someone hurt you and you haven't healed. and it makes you violent when you feel threatened. and because the only time you've ever felt violence is when you're being touched by someone, that's what sets you off." he threw his hands up, looking from laurent to jord imploringly. "and what? you think that makes you unlovable?"

laurent just stared in still silence. he was rumpled, back of his neck and small of his back damp from the sweat of sleep, and still reclined on the bed, he felt overly exposed being dressed down like so. but the wheels of his brain, the ones that had been rocked into a dizzying spin as his flight responses had kicked in, slowly began to decelerate, and splinters of logic jammed their way in.

"i'm sorry i frightened you. i'll never scare you again if you leave. is that what you want?" laurent lowered his eyes, and damen ducked to follow them, insisting on holding his gaze. "i won't be the first to see you and love you. you'll be running away from men like me your whole life."

"jord." laurent interrupted damen and shifted his gaze instead to jord's feet. "leave us."

this time, it was jord's adamant anger that he faced. "laurent, no." there was no threat in the room any longer, and truly, laurent's life had never been in danger at all. but jord was no longer here as a guard, which was why laurent wanted him out. auguste might as well have been standing at the captain's shoulder. protectors that never could come everywhere with him, never could keep him safe from everything that might hurt him.

laurent breathed deep through his nose, which was stuffy from tears, and so what might have been a calm sigh turned into an undignified sniffle. he could not pretend to be firm any longer: he held his head in his hands and closed his pounding eyes. "go," he begged. "please."

jord hesitated, and laurent felt cruel forcing him to go, but as he yelled muffled into his lap: "this is not a group discussion. _leave us_ , please."

the captain let out an audible sigh, and laurent was grateful that he wasn't a man to hold a grudge, at least not against his prince. "i'll be outside," he said, quiet, defeated, but then: "here." when laurent looked up, he saw the lion's face of his dagger handle upside-down. jord was handing it back to him, and he reached out with a damp hand and took it, slipping it back into its sheath at his hip. 

when the door had closed behind jord, laurent realized that perhaps his leaving served damen's benefit more than his own: damen came to his knees instantly by the bedside, staring up at laurent with intense focus, imploring. he might have done it in front of jord, if forced to, but laurent was grateful for his unexpected foresight. it was, indeed, not a group discussion. this was to be between just the two of them.

"do you want to leave?" damen asked, and it was without the anger that had flourished in him moments ago, but he was still deadly serious. there was no impish sweetness in his hard face now.

laurent sniffled and set his jaw, hard. "why don't you want me to?" he said it as if it disgusted him.

"because i'm not afraid of you." they both spoke the way men did when they were on high alert, hackles raised, wholly unsure of what the other was thinking. circling each other. "are you afraid of me?"

laurent shook his head furtively, but as soon as he did he realized how deeply false it was, so paradoxically, he said "yes." 

damen breathed a laugh of disbelief, his lip curled. he was offended. it was an altogether new expression to laurent's eyes. "i don't believe that. you're not afraid when we're together. maybe the first time, nervous. but not anymore."

putting two and two together, laurent blinked his tear logged eyes, and a splinter of bitterness made him grimace, the reminder that damen had _known_. he must have felt it: something more than just inexperience. "if i'd know you knew, i would have been. but that's not what i mean," he blustered. "what if i had killed you now? your father would send my head back to arles in a sack. the war would never end."

"none of those things are _me_. you're afraid i'll make a mistake and then you'll make a mistake and cause a war?" he looked so incredulous and pitying that it made laurent hiccup another sob, this time of fury.

" _what is wrong with you_?" he spat. "callous brute. you think i don't give myself enough hardship for my madness? i'm glad you find it all so ridiculous. that i might go to lengths to hide this, and that it frightens me."

but there: like erupting from the same garden only to have wound up on different floors with a stairwell between them, it was clear both had miscalculated where they were headed. damen's face relaxed into surprise. "laurent," he breathed, and seemed to be able to do nothing but shake his head and laugh in disbelief. "i don't think it's ridiculous." his shoulders shrugged in their charming, lopsided way. "it just doesn't change how i feel. i never wanted you to be easy. you think that that's not why i wanted you in the first place? you were repellent and bad-tempered from the first moment. i fell for you the second you threatened to have my tongue cut out. i don't want easy, or simple, or sane. so being touched makes you homicidal. i don't care. it's worth it for all the happiness touching you brings me."

laurent was defeated. head in hands once more, he was all at once nauseous and terrified and hopeful and unsure, trauma cycling through its emotions at a whirlwind pace in his mind and heart. it helped, he found, when damen reached out and laid a hand on his knee. "i cannot face your father like this." it was really all laurent could think of: wiping his tearstained cheeks and lifting his chin and sitting in theomedes' council room going over expenditures and warships and ambassadorships _again_ and _again_ and _again_.

he heard damen heft a defeated laugh through his nose. "that's what i came here to tell you."

the facade of the statesman felt like it was slipping away like ice sheets melting off a gabled roof, revealing nothing but old, wet shingles. laurent wanted to cry again only just after he'd been able to shut off the tears, to cry now from the frustration of the negotiations, to cry from how humiliated he was, every time, bargaining for his own future, padding theomedes' coffers, feeling like a beggar gambling with his big brother's money. he couldn't hold his chin up any longer, couldn't let damen lead him to theomedes' state rooms and serve him up alone once more, to face more embarrassment. his face folded again, breath catching in his chest as he felt a fresh wave of angry tears coming.

through them, he watched as damen, panicked, finished his thought hastily. "he accepts the terms as they are," damen scrambled, holding his hands up again as if he weren't sure how to comfort laurent now.

if anything, though, laurent needed more ginger tea: he felt the whiplash of a wave slamming sideways into him, and his empty stomach gave a horrible lurch. "what?" he was incredulous and, frankly, irritated by the confusion, looking up from his palms wearily. it was as if damen had his hands on laurent's yoke and was, gingerly, freeing his shoulders of a weight he was ready to crumple under.

damen nodded, small and tired. they were both drained. "he'd like to throw a celebration. you could leave. nobody would stop you. or you could stay."

and what could laurent do? not run. even if he'd wanted to, he didn't have it in him. it was time, he thought, to simply forgive himself. first, though, he threw up.

—————

****

**THEOMEDES** wore smug well. laurent wore it better, but he knew now was not the time to exercise that particular gift. it was time to embrace the fact that he'd convinced the achelon king, finally, that he was getting a bargain.

even nikandros could admit it: "this is a victory that was hard-won," and he looked slightly less than suicidal. was it pity for laurent's position or genuine affinity? but no one had pity for him in achelos, he knew. he stood tall, shoulders back and chin high as his mother had taught him, for all of the ceremony that came with a betrothal.

first, the signing of the agreement that felt a bit like laurent was signing over his own life: yes, herein i, prince laurent of vere and acquitart; lord of delfeur, varenne, marche, and chastillon; grand duke of hankë and ingria, pledge to suffer my father-in-law's snide comments until one of us dies, preferably him. i pledge that i will not outwardly plot to kill him. i pledge not to remind him regularly that my father died fighting his army and still won the battle. i pledge to suffer, in short, because i love his son. but after they'd scrawled their names at the bottom of the document, he was thoroughly distracted by damen presenting him with something very sparkly. an exquisite ring, two massive rectangular stones side-by-side—one ruby, one sapphire—rung with so many little diamonds that it looked like pure sunlight.

it was instant obsession. love at first sight. "what a _gesture_ ," he breathed, cradling it in his fingers like a delicate egg, and then he slipped it fastidiously onto his right forefinger, extending his hand to admire the way it looked compared to his signet. he was so thoroughly enchanted that he barely noticed damen reaching to pluck it back off, and only was able to frown for a second before he saw that damen was simply applying it to the third finger of his left hand, instead.

"in akielos," he said in his native language, "a ring from a lover goes onto this finger. there's a vein that leads from this finger right to your heart." which was a stupid, silly custom, and still made laurent whimper with its overwhelming sweetness.

second, a dinner. formal and seated at the king's long table, it felt almost veretian in its staidness, laurent realizing mid-meal that he was using both a knife and a fork: neither had been wholly regular occurrences there, with meats wrapped in grape leaves and stuffed olives, paper-thin pastries full of rich, sharp cheese. a piece of red meat worth a sharp knife wasn't the kind of rich eating the achelons preferred, but as damen had noted, leaning to whisper in laurent's ear, the beef had been cured in the palace kitchens in salt plucked from the bottom of the straight among the pearls, and so on, and so forth, until laurent simply cut him a piece and fed it to him to shut him up.

and then, last of all, the games.

"a tournament?" laurent had asked, reposed on the ground with his elbow perched on the edge of the fountain wall. he was doodling errantly while aristokles snoozed on a nearby lounge, eucalyptus leaves undulating above their heads.

damen, back to the fountain, was busy doing something to laurent's hair: he did not know or care what, just enjoyed the feeling of fingers behind his ear and against his scalp.

"a little." damen looked pensive, which laurent found to be a much more convincing—and attractive—rendition of the thinking face than theomedes wore sometimes. "it has most of the things a tournament has, but it's more like a... celebration of the art of achelon athletes. it's less soldiers showing off, although, there will be soldiers showing off."

laurent drew a lovely series of arcs that came together in gentle dimples, shading them lazily to give them some kind of dimension. a shadow here, a bend there. a lovely, broad, well-muscled arm: he looked at it dreamily as if it were the real thing, which was laid out to damen's side along the fountain wall, speckled with the varying splotches of sunlight coming in through the tree above.

—————

****

**"CAN** love forge so quickly?"

laurent's fingers played the harp delicately over damen's ribcage; he could hear the song in his head, rich clear notes in the night air later, spent and naked above the sheets. easier to sleep that way in the heat.

"all the great poems say so."

"all the great poems say so," laurent parroted, and narrowed his eyes suspiciously. "you haven't read any of the great poems." but damen just chuckled, which made laurent feel both tricked and pleased: damen was getting good at this, starting a joke only to let laurent finish it unwittingly. like miscalculating a set of stairs and stepping down only to realize he'd missed one, a temporary little thrill.

"it will not be easy for me here."

"i'll do anything to keep you happy. anything. name it."

"you don't mean that. you only say it because you can't imagine the horrifying things i'd ask."

"i can imagine all kinds of horrifying things. you really discount my imagination sometimes," damen said, and laurent couldn't tell whether the pout he wore was put-on or genuine. "you would kill every person here i'd ever touched. i like your jealousy. it suits you. and it makes me feel like a prize."

"i'm not _jealous_." his nose wrinkled and lip curled at the idea, like he could smell her nauseating perfume. but he was. he was seething with it, always, his only relief coming in the moments when he simply forgot she existed.

"yes you _are_." damen smiled like he could see right through laurent, the way his heart skipped and blood boiled. "you're jealous of everyone who's come before you. but no one ever really has. i've never had this with anyone else. be jealous, and possessive, and i'll be wrapped around your little finger." he grabbed laurent's pinky and gave it a little shake to emphasize his point, which made laurent's arm flop around in an undignified way.

"i will not be an easy partner for you. i mean it. i push people. i will push you."

"will you love me, though?"

laurent glanced up at the ceiling for a moment, avoiding damen's gaze. "i think you know that i already do."

"then that's all i need. push me as hard as you can. i've never been afraid of that. you'll make me stronger. you already tried to stab me, and that didn't stop me." laurent must have looked unconvinced, because a little flash of annoyance crossed damen's face.

it did take a moment to reconcile. damen was so consistently agreeable that it was easy to forget how eager he was to meet any challenge. he had been brave in all things since laurent had known him. on rides, in fights, at dance, in court, against all the icy demons that had flanked laurent and done their best to prevent his advances. he was not so fiery himself, but it was clear that spice attracted him. 

"i don't think it will be hard at all for you to be happy here. you have everyone under your thumb. you must see that. think how it'll be in a year. or five."

laurent hummed, and shrugged, rolling onto his back and wriggling until he'd wedged himself against damen under the sheet. "i'm happy when i'm with you. so you'll just have to stay with me constantly." he felt the heavy weight of damen leaning into him, and of his arm over laurent's chest.

"that's convenient. staying with you constantly is my only demand."

—————

****

**AFTER** a week of waking up with the sun, laurent was finally able to sleep through its rise. indeed, when he did awaken finally, he could no longer see the telltale morning shadow that the city cast over the sea through his window. it was closer to noon than dawn, surely.

like a cat, he gave a great stretch, groaning as he spread his arms wide and delicately rolled his ankles to crack them. his fingertips barely brushed each side of the bed, which was evidence that he was its sole occupant, and he raised his head to confirm: the room was empty, the bed no longer warm where damen must have left from. "i am deserted then," he called into the silence, and rose to sit up on his elbows. his reflection in the looking glass on the wall appeared to be sort of costume of a ruffled cockatoo like they'd had in the gardens at arles, hair a great yellow mess. he had slept hard, that was clear.

pouting, laurent looked around the room. damen's chiton was still laying on the cushioned bench by the window, but his sandals were gone. laurent considered genuinely if he had simply wandered off naked without thinking twice, and wondered if he had gotten far. he barked his lover's name in a morning-hoarse voice, watching the doors on the other side of the room that led in from his apartments.

several long moments went by with no response. so laurent then yelled for his captain.

no response. " _closest being with a heartbeat_ ," he finally bellowed, exasperated, and the door creaked open enough from aimeric to peep his head in.

"your highness?" he said with his fine eyebrows up: he was clearly close to giggling.

laurent huffed, and flopped back onto the bed. "come in here. i'm bored. i would talk to you."

he heard the door close and aimeric's boots across the stone floor, his sword belt clinking gingerly like he wore bells. "i'm on duty, your highness," aimeric chastized, and laurent gave a flail of protest, the white sheets flourishing around him like the foam of a broken wave.

"all by yourself?"

"with three other men."

"then they will be the first line of defense, and yours will be a sneak attack." it was a joke, of course, and laurent took for granted that it was an order, too, and that aimeric would obey him. but then there were the markers of real friendship, or rather, disrespect for the prince's station: aimeric made himself at home sitting right on the edge of the bed, on top of laurent's left foot, and did not budge when laurent thrashed his leg to dislodge him. he met aimeric's gaze and gave an undignified grunt when he saw how blissfully calm the guard looked. fine. he could annoy, too.

"where is jord this morning?" he sniped, narrowing his eyes in challenge. aimeric shrugged, but it was just an ounce too casually: fake, laurent could spy it in a second.

"he has the morning off," aimeric replied, matter-of-fact.

laurent nodded with dramatized realization. "i see. why don't you both have the same schedule?"

"i couldn't begin to understand his mind," aimeric breathed, and laurent suspected that this was the truth. it sounded the way damen said when he spoke about laurent to someone else: adoringly exasperated. but laurent knew that jord drafted all the men's schedules and assignments, and that without question, there was intention behind every posting.

"if he does it to seem impartial, he should stop. i would rather you both have the same time off, so you aren't distracted with pining when you're on duty."

aimeric was weak. laurent could tell that he was moments away from confessing, his pillowy lips twitching to fight a smile. "i don't know what you mean, your highness." he said laurent's honorific so casually that it might have been his first name.

laurent made an annoyed sound and let his head fall back against the pillows, staring up at the ceiling. "fine, don't be any fun. i'll tell him i want you turned off and see how he reacts. that'll be telling enough."

in another moment of blatant insubordination, laurent felt aimeric's gloved hand pinch his calf through the blanket. "don't do that to him. you're so cruel," aimeric chided.

"then tell me!" laurent cried, giving his leg another vain flail, and peeking down at aimeric, he saw his friend smile with a bashful sweetness that he had earned before, but before it had been laurent as the object of his affection. it felt nice to see that someone else could earn it, too.

"what would you know?"

"when did it start?" laurent was smug. it would have taken hours, maybe days, to torture a confession out of jord. aimeric split like a peapod.

"about when i could chew again." it was clear by aimeric's little shrug and dreamy expression that this was not meant as a barb. it was just a point in time for him, a happy beginning. so laurent tried to quell his guilt. it was easier when the meaning of aimeric's words truly dawned on him.

"that's _two years_ ," he gasped.

aimeric looked casual, if anything amused watching laurent's gears turn before his very eyes. not many men had the pleasure of seeing laurent taken by surprise. he thought back: two years. jord had been the one to deduce what laurent had done to this poor boy. he wondered when it had happened, really, whether jord had pined for a noble boy's attention when the prince was aimeric's goal. but two years was more than just a ricochet romance. laurent thought before picking his next question, as if he only had one.

"what is it?"

aimeric's smile went a little damp. "what is it? doomed, i guess. i doubt my father would go for it, and jord doesn't have a dowry." it was a clever little insult. laurent narrowed his eyes appreciatively.

"i am finding fathers to be the most difficult part of the courtship process. but yours belongs to me," he said, although in truth lord guion belonged to auguste: it didn't make a difference to laurent. he could take what he wanted from auguste's jewelry box whenever he pleased. "i could convince him of anything, surely." no proper segue, but laurent was finishing putting the pieces together. "but you weren't at chastillon. and you asked to come here. because of jord."

aimeric looked to his lap sheepishly. "i... realized, when you were there. that if he were to leave again with you, i... couldn't do it again."

"so you are in love."

aimeric nodded.

"you know when i marry this oaf, jord will stay here with me."

"so you _will_ marry him?" aimeric looked up, sweet surprise in his lovely green eyes. he looked as laurent had felt upon seeing the secret exchange of glances between aimeric and jord on the ship: touched. it made laurent blush.

"his father has agreed." laurent sat up in bed, bringing the blanket up with him tucked beneath his chin: it was cozy, and he was not wearing a nightshirt.

"and do you _want_ to marry him?" those green eyes were searching. but even if there had been any secrets to see, aimeric had never been good at deciphering laurent's coded expressions. all laurent felt was that thin, sour layer of guilt.

"i do." he said it like an apology: _i'm sorry i want to marry him and couldn't bare it when you kissed me_. there wasn't one man on laurent's guard who didn't know what happened behind his closed chamber doors every night with damen. but although there was a sadness to aimeric's pretty face, there was happiness there, too. laurent ventured forward, dipping a toe into the unpleasantness: "did jord ever tell you... anything? about why i was the way i was?"

aimeric looked so understanding that laurent couldn't stand it. he didn't deserve it, not with aimeric sporting two cheeky gaps when he smiled where laurent had permanently removed a canine and a molar. "he told me that you had been hurt. badly. i—he got upset. i didn't ask more."

laurent gave a little sniff: he could feel the morning more acutely now, the stuffiness of his nose from the salty air, the stickiness at the corners of his eyes. this was not as he had ever expected to find himself in bed with aimeric. he felt a hollow gulf between them, and he extended a hand, draping his arm over his folded knees, palm up, unexpectant, just there.

"it... is the hardest thing i've ever had to do," laurent breathed, and he was surprised at his own candor. the thought had not really occurred to him before, and he had to clarify it with his mind before he clarified it aloud: "going through it, and getting past it. if you could call it that. it's far from being how it should be."

aimeric nodded, neither of them meeting one another's eyes, looking instead at miscellaneous points on the sheet.

"damen seems keen to practice."

laurent laughed despite himself. "he is... game."

in an imitation of a man full of pity, aimeric sighed. "what a curse you've been saddled with. he's..."

"hideous," laurent finished, and aimeric winced showily.

"truly grotesque. i mean, physically, such a shame."

"agreed," laurent said soberly. "repugnant. who could have thought," his eyes welled on command, which was a skill he had mastered early in life. "the beautiful prince of vere subjected to a life of such true ugliness. but aimeric, sometimes we must sacrifice for the greater good. i do this for the glory of vere."

aimeric broke first, as usual, his laugh bright and ringing in the empty chambers. he took laurent's relaxed hand and turned it in his own, pressing a kiss to the signet on his pinky, and then to the sapphire and ruby ring on his middle finger. it sparkled brilliantly in the morning light, its little crown of diamonds sending reflections like stars to the ceiling. and when he gazed down at laurent's rings, he did it with a peaceful look. "i am happy for us," he said softly. he had kissed laurent's signet a hundred times, a sign of fealty and service, but it seemed to mean more to kiss the betrothal ring.

"i am, too," laurent said, and reached out with his fingertips to brush aimeric's round cheek. and there it was, like they'd rehearsed it and knew their cues: laurent leaned in, aimeric too, and they traded a kiss that was soft, pliant despite its timidity.

it was, laurent felt instantly, the kiss he had often daydreamed of sharing with aimeric when he was younger, when they were in love. and while it felt as good as he'd imagined it would have, while his heart did great breaches in his chest like a whale, when they parted, it was a happy ending. the look they shared was one of agreement. what they might have had would have been good. what they both had now was better.

laurent sighed. "come with me. we will find my lover or yours and demand they entertain us. or perhaps set something on fire and run away before anyone sees it's us."

"oh," said aimeric, looking like he'd snapped out of something. "i know where the prince is. he's training for the games."

—————

****

**IOS** had a training yard, but that was not where they went. they went to the stables, because aimeric said, the gymnasium was on the green hill behind the palace, and it was a taxing walk—the intention being that even reaching the grounds was a physical exertion. easier instead just to go by horseback and leave their horses in the pen beside the long, low columned arena.

laurent gave medúse's long white face a pat, turning to follow aimeric inside, when they were passed by a trio of massive achelon men, brown as nuts, shoving each other and laughing and terribly, terribly naked. laurent stilled; aimeric had already stopped short.

"i don't... know if i can do this," he blustered, and both he and aimeric burst into manic laughter.

"it's _constant_ ," aimeric insisted, looking back at laurent with wide eyes. "who fights naked?" if laurent was as red as aimeric was, they were going to look like sheepish little boys once they walked in. which, laurent supposed, was true.

laurent stepped up beside his guard and put an arm around his shoulders, ushering them through the archway. "i wonder if one gets used to it?"

"well, i certainly _could_. but it is..." aimeric trailed off.

"...hard not to stare," laurent finished, and aimeric nodded furtively. "we will get through it together, friend."

it was easier not to stare when they were confronted with so _much_ of it.

there was not a single athlete training that wore a lick of clothing, save for several pairs of men in the center of the yard, whose knuckles were wrapped in leather. they were minimal versions of the cestus that veretian fighters wore, leather straps with knuckles inlaid in metal for a more brutal impact, although even veretians practiced with simple leather. laurent was glad he saw no glints of bronze or silver: he recognized damen's body before he recognized his face with a flush when their eyes met. damen deserted his match immediately, making a beeline for the colonnade where laurent and aimeric came to pause.

"hello," laurent said wearily, as if it was deeply taxing for him to be there and he were not at all happy to see damen or conflicted, deeply, about how very, very without clothes he was. he was unwrapping the leather strips from his hands, coated with a thick sheen of sweat from exercise in the sun. if achelons liked their kings to be the picture of physical fitness, they would move on quickly when theomedes died.

damen leaned his hip against the balustrade, running his knuckles over laurent's bare bicep. laurent was jacketless, his short tunic made of billowing emerald green silk, tucked into his breeches voluminously. jokaste's artistry. laurent wondered whether damen would know that simply by seeing it, but after a moment it was abundantly clear that the only thing damen was focused on was how much skin laurent was showing. "this is... very nice," he mused in his native language, fingering the silk and, as gingerly as possible, cuffing laurent on the chin. a punishment for the distraction of his visible arms.

"you know, it _is_ as close as i can get to the dress code up here," laurent quipped back in veretian, and while he was sure the joke amused damen, the prince looked so thoroughly hypnotized by laurent that he didn't offer a laugh. "will you compete in this circus?"

dreamily, damen nodded. he had gone back to feeling at the fabric of laurent's shirt, stroking it with the back of his forefinger. like he had never seen fine silk before. "i will." laurent narrowed his eyes. he did not know why this irritated him: he had thought that damen would be a spectator, too.

"what games are there?" aimeric said, and damen only just then seemed to notice the boy's presence. but he smiled at him in the genial, soft way he was wont to do, happy to answer anyone's question. he liked laurent's guards a great deal.

"there are running races, of different distances. javelin, discus, the distance jump. wrestling, boxing, and three horse races: chariot, the okton, and a ridden race on the track."

laurent's face lit up. "i will race then," he said decisively, feeling giddy. épine had made progress in her manners, but laurent knew she could beat any horse in achelos three-legged.

"you can't compete," damen said with a furrowed brow, and laurent bristled.

"because i would humiliate your riders?"

"because only freeborn achelon men can compete. do you think if veretians were allowed to sign up that this yard would be devoid of every one of your soldiers? you box ferociously in vere. you would beat us in that _and_ the horse races." 

"it's true," aimeric admitted. "we have some of the best in our ranks, too. orlant has killed men in the ring."

laurent shifted his gaze to the fighter that damen had been dodging punches from. he sat on a marble bench, dousing his chest with water: it had the same barrel shape as damen's, and he had similarly long legs, but the most similar feature, and damning evidence of a shared bloodline, was his face. more like theomedes' than damen's, but they had the same eyes and easy smile.

"your brother," laurent hazarded, and damen followed his gaze and nodded.

"he arrived last night."

laurent found his chin rising incrementally. kastor was a new challenge, and he had vanquished all that had come before. he was ready for another. "i will meet him when he is fully clothed," he said, and damen chuckled, looking back square at laurent, which was when laurent saw the split skin above his left eyebrow. he pressed his fingers to damen's chin to twist his head further and inspect the little wound. it was indeed small, and the skin was broken, but it was not actively bleeding. it had a bit of honey smeared over it, laurent saw, that glistened in the sun. "please don't tell me you'll be boxing in the games." his voice was devoid of compassion for his lover's wound. he was exasperated.

damen's smile was knowing. he had clearly been expecting to be reprimanded. "it's not my best sport."

"i can see that," laurent quipped.

"i ride in the okton. it's more dangerous than boxing." damen's chest puffed up proudly, and it was almost comical. predominantly attractive, though.

laurent shrugged, gesturing generally at damen's pleasantly impudent face. "just don't destroy this." he wrinkled his nose as damen leaned in for a kiss, but as if damen thought better of it, or decided to be withholding, he pushed himself off the balustrade and began to meander back to his brother across the yard.

"what about the rest of me?" he called, cheeky. he was so horribly naked.

"well, just remember the order in which i prefer your limbs."

damen's head canted like a confused pup.

"you can lose your arms and legs, but any other appendages i consider essential," he called back across the distance in achelon. he felt rather smug seeing kastor burst into a riotous laughter upon overhearing. damen was quick on the draw, though, despite being stuck between his laughing older brother and his snide lover.

"i don't remember specifics. but i'll come find you when i'm done and you can remind me what your favorite parts are." loud enough and literal enough for everyone nearby to hear, laurent felt himself flush at the retort, pleased. he found he liked something about the way damen flaunted their intimacy. he was a man bragging among his peers, laurent knew, and he could feel eyes on him, other men sizing up or drinking in the prize their prince had won. or the prize's lovely guard.

"just a terrible fate," aimeric sighed despondently. "he is hideous."

laurent matched aimeric's sigh, a bit more theatrical about it, longing and sad. "i know. the ugliest of them all."

—————

****

**THEY** spent most of the day together, learning how to be friends again. the achelons were busy at the gymnasium, so the training yard was almost wholly veretian that day, and laurent used the privacy as an excuse to practice with his guards. he took on aimeric with a sword and then jord with a knife, and was beaten soundly by both: half because they were both better fighters than he, half because he kept getting distracted, eyes flitting to whichever lover he wasn't fighting. aimeric, especially, wore an expression that was nothing like what he'd shown at a sea of brown, naked achelon athletes. that had been pleasant, perhaps, but when laurent ended up in the sand with jord's boot on his chest, it was because the look on aimeric's face was unbridled and undeniable lust. men who liked to fight, it seemed, liked to watch their lovers fight. he frowned, tossing his knife in his hand, thinking perhaps that was what damen wanted. he could fight, too, he pouted, and tackled jord's knees to bring him to the ground. 

it could not have been more well-timed if it was a play being directed: as he growled ferally and scrabbled at jord's vest, he heard familiar bright, loud laughter behind him.

"what a scrappy lad!" the voice was familiar, too, but strange, like it was rusty. an older, more-used version of damen's, he understood, because seeing both kastor and his younger brother side-by-side, it was clear that rusty, older, and slightly more-used were apt descriptors of the man. he was auguste's age, or something close, but looked older: perhaps it was the pepper at his brows or the way the sun had worn his face, he looked more like theomedes than damen. laurent was just glad they had wrapped something around their waists. he didn't know if he could have survived the stroke of humiliation he might have suffered from standing across from his naked lover surrounded by a yard full of his own guards. and then he felt rather red, remembering he had shed the rich fabric of his tunic at the yard railing and was sticky, shirtless, and coated in dust.

"i don't know who taught him to fight dirty," jord grumbled, and when laurent stood and extended his hand, jord gave it a petulant slap before grabbing it and taking the help.

but laurent didn't let the ruse fly. "you did," he said monotonously, and felt damen's hand on his bare arm once more: he looked more distracted now by laurent's shirtlessness than laurent had been by damen's abject nudity. he supposed that had to do with the assumed rarity of the occasion—or lackthereof.

what really disarmed him, rather than damen's trance or jord's knife skills, was the hand that extended out in greeting. laurent couldn't remember the last time a man went to shake his hand, and yet here kastor was. laurent was a bit afraid his bones might be crushed, and he was hesitant and stiff for the handshake, but it seemed like such an informal greeting was kastor's ultimate pleasure, because he smiled in a crafty, gauche way and gave the back of laurent's hand a great, enthusiastic pat. 

"i can see why you liked him," he said sidelong to damen, and if laurent wasn't pink-cheeked enough, he was then, although it was with a defiant lift to his chin. kastor, palms suddenly up in surrender, amended his statement as if he could feel laurent's dislike. "not in that way. you had all the men laughing earlier. damen likes being teased," he clarified, clapping his brother on the shoulder with a resounding _smack_ , "and i like people who tease him."

—————

****

**DINNER** that night was sumptuous. all of the men at court had been spending the entire day training: it seemed as if every kyros had eight sons, all of them tall and strong or quick, and some, like nikandros and kastor, young enough to compete themselves. so there was more of everything to sate the hungry bodies. laurent was grateful that achelons didn't insist on the rigid dining tables and chairs they used in the palace at arles. he could not eat as much as he had without reclining, and by the time the second servings of dessert came around, he was fully reposed on the low cushions, using damen's chest as a headrest. he fed damen liquor-soaked cherries blindly, lifting them up above his head and waiting until damen fished them from his fingers with his sticky lips.

it struck laurent (slowly, since he was a little tipsy) how many peers it seemed like damen had here. jokaste and nikandros and kastor, all close to the same age, and some noblemen who seemed to be between kastor and damen in age and their wives. these were damen's friends. it was the kind of social circle he might have cultivated if he'd gotten along naturally with the boys at court in vere. like auguste, damen collected people because he liked the same things they did. or perhaps because he was unendingly sweet, where laurent knew he could be hard to swallow for some.

even nikandros now seemed to like him—or least be unoffended by his presence. however laurent had managed to gain his approval, it looked like the bad foot they had gotten off to was a little undone. nikandros was still the first to goad or chide him, but he also didn't seem constantly armed with insults and open hatred the way he had in arles.

"i do wish i could compete in this race," laurent whined, picking a cherry out of the dish and feeding it to himself instead of damen, who he could feel huff in protest.

"it's so much better that you can't. my father would call the wedding off. he wouldn't stand for you humiliating the best riders in achelos."

"is he _really_ that good?" kastor asked, disbelieving, and upon glancing over, laurent he realized kastor was asking nikandros. a clever older brother to seek corroboration. but nikandros rolled his eyes and nodded.

"might be that red horse of his, but i've never seen anyone that quick."

"that horse is half-broken. when she's finished, she'll be twice as fast," laurent quipped. "we'll have a proper race at the wedding. in vere, we allow anyone fast enough to enter." this had virtually nothing to do with the interest of international goodwill, but laurent felt it was worth saying snottily, anyway. "you're lucky veretians can't compete. orlant could box anyone, and jord is the best spear thrower there is."

one the men scoffed. "my brother odios will be the victor of the javelin. he is gifted." odios, laurent had learned, was the king's guard that orlant had so lewdly mused about in the stable yard. his older brother, whose name laurent could scarcely remember—a mess of ks and ys—had his same black hair and green eyes. they were both beautiful and sly looking, and laurent hoped privately that orlant had fucked this gifted spear-thrower of a boy. good-naturedly, of course: if one liked it rough, one would enjoy it with orlant.

"your brother odios will be the victor of the javelin because he is not allowed to compete against my captain," laurent clarified cattily. "if it has a blade, he can throw it better than anyone."

odios' brother smiled his sly smile and rolled his eyes, but before he could respond, laurent continued, chin up. "he taught me, and i'm legendary in vere."

that made the black-haired lord laugh, and laurent's brow cocked. "at javelin? you're as big around as a javelin."

this time it was laurent's turn to roll his eyes: what a boring retort, as tired as it was untrue. these men all spent too much time working their bodies for the sake of athleticism—laurent used his muscles for activities that had an actual purpose. "good at the spear. best at the dagger."

the lord's wife, a dark-skinned woman draped artfully over his shoulder, looked at laurent with a barely-restrained smile on her pursed lips. "why don't we have him prove it?" she proposed in a tinny voice, and he grunted in approval, looking animated.

"set me a target at ten paces. i can hit anything."

"this i can't confirm," nikandros laughed, voice full of disbelief, raising his hands in front of his chest to recuse himself, and kastor stared at laurent with moony eyes.

laurent heard damen hum beneath him. he had eaten quite a few cherries. "nor can i. you are full of surprises, laurent of vere."

"that's because it's a primitive hobby and only appropriate to show off one's skill in it when drunk." he liked that damen made no effort to hold him back. he could take care of himself.

he stood, slowly extracting himself from their lounge, and didn't bother to stifle the enormous yawn that came with righting himself onto his feet once more. he was at his sharpest, he thought, and chuckled aloud at his own silent joke.

jokaste, smirking, purred from her corner: "oh, you couldn't hit yourself in the face in this state." but laurent just gave a cheeky wink at no one in particular and pulled the dagger from his belt. the gilded handle and the massive star rubies glinted in the torchlight. he had kept this wedding gift with him at all times in ios.

the entire group of achelons was now laughing incredulously. "that is a big knife for a little prince," kastor goaded, and laurent wheeled around, a bit unevenly, pointing at the bastard with the tip of his knife. 

"it is akielon. a silly, handsome prince gave it to me. pick a target," he challenged.

kastor looked around the room. there wasn't much in the palace that would accept a knife point—almost every surface, statue, pillar was white marble. but kastor was creative, and he peeled himself from the side of a pretty redheaded girl named lydia and plucked a pear from the table. tossing it in his hand casually, he passed laurent, who felt those oddly familiar eyes look him head to toe, sizing him up. laurent sniffed. he was uncomfortably tipsy.

kastor wandered the room for a moment before stopping in front of a statue: a woman lying on her side, naked but for a wreath of flowers on her head, holding a cornucopia on the ground before her. and within the marble fruits, kastor placed the pear. it was about waist-height.

"ten paces?" he confirmed, and walked ten of his own towards laurent—they were thankfully a little shorter than laurent's would have been. these achelon brothers might have had long legs, but they were nothing compared to laurent's own. so laurent met him at the mark, twirling his dagger lazily in his hand.

they said nothing. kastor looked at him with an expression laurent had never seen in his own older brother: the boredom of someone who didn't believe in the person they were looking at. but laurent knew exactly how auguste would look in that moment. already proud, regardless of whether laurent missed the target by a yard. picturing it easily, laurent smiled, turned, stilled, and aimed.

the pear was juicy, and it bled in a spurt onto the marble pedestal. it was too soft to hold the knife for more than a few moments, and the blade slipped back out and hit the floor with a metallic clatter. as if this sound were a cue, kastor leapt into the air with a holler, and _that_ behavior laurent recognized. it made him beam, and he clapped his hands together like a pleased child who had been given a large piece of cake.

"another one!" he called, and he heard it echoed among the group. when he turned on his heel to look, damen's eyes were alight, hungry. laurent's chin shot up proudly. "come," he demanded, sticking his finger out to pay damen come-hither with a curl of it. "bring another pear. i will hit it off your head at ten paces."

the mood shifted instantaneously. those who were laughing or cheering went quiet, or their laughter changed to something unsure. damen himself had to take a great breath, staring at laurent intently for a good long moment before he acquiesced. laurent felt his cheeks warm: he loved it when damen would follow him into whatever hellish danger he could concoct.

nearly skipping, he went to retrieve his knife from the floor, casually licking the juice from the blade and feeling smug that he didn't taste blood. he was surprised, and surprised that he'd hit the pear so cannily, and that might have been a sign for him not to endanger damen's life or eyes with his bravado, but that would not be any fun, and it would certainly not show these courtiers that laurent was as exciting as any wild soldier of a prince would have been. he would give them the show that auguste might have. he could be impressive in any language.

he passed damen, who marched dutifully to the wall with two pears in his hands: one for the knife, and one that he took a great bite of, the juice slicking his chin where his stubble had grown thick and black. "will you still love me if i have an eye patch?" he purred in veretian, and laurent smiled sweetly.

"i will have you one made of solid gold."

damen straightened himself, back to the wall, and took a moment to balance the pear on top of his head. it toppled twice, and with his catlike reflexes hindered by boozy cherries, it ended up bruised from hitting the floor by the time he finally steadied it on top of his mop of curls.

"is this advisable?" nikandros' voice was clearly alarmed: he was on edge, sitting up straight. he was not talking to laurent, but to damen, staring at him imploringly, furiously. "i think he has shown himself a good knife-thrower."

damen shrugged - the pear fell again. "well," he replied, bending down to pick it up once again and taking a few moments to right it one final time, "i think he might be a great knife-thrower. only one way to see."

and there it was. the sweet expression of trust, of pride yet unearned. he believed laurent could do it, and laurent didn't have to picture his brother's face this time.

he sobered himself as much as possible, which was not much, and in the end it was more beneficial to embrace his drunkenness. if he didn't fight the way he swayed slightly, he could predict it like wind. with his arm bent and the knife cocked at his temple, he gave his wrist a few studious flicks, testing the weight of the dagger. it was an elementary technique, but jord had always told him to focus more on his aim than showmanship. he stabbed, threw, and fought more like jord than auguste. 

he knew he'd missed the second he let go, and scrambled forward wildly as if he could outrun his own throw, an immediate and brutalizing wave of nausea hitting him as he watched the knife hurtle forward in a shimmer. someone screamed. there was a flash of red against the marble, and laurent slammed into damen's body in a white hot panic.

"fuck, fuck, fuck," he groaned, grasping at damen's shoulders as they both fell to their kneels on the marble. he began grappling everywhere to try and find wetness, to discern where the blood was coming from, but he couldn't think, couldn't focus over the noise. the clatter.

the sound of the knife bouncing along the marble floor. damen gasping as if he'd drowned. but as laurent pressed his hands to damen's chest, he realized that the gasping was nothing but stupid, sweet, breathless laughter.

"you're okay," he ventured, realizing he'd been holding his breath. he pulled back enough to catch damen's expression: sheer amusement and deep relief. and he let himself break into hysterical, relieved laughter too, and collapsed beside him on the floor. damen coughed, and nodded. he still clutched his half-eaten pear, and the one that had been on his head had disappeared, rolled off when he'd suddenly ducked.

"i saw the look on your face," damen gasped, "you drunk fool." he clasped his hand to laurent's cheek, beaming wildly.

"you're the..." laurent tried to accuse damen of being the foolish one, ready to stand and let a drunk boy chuck a dagger at his head, and then he noticed the red of damen's cape bunched behind him on the wall, and he was laughing again.

he felt a large pair of hands grab him by the elbow and pull him up to his feet and dust him off. "that might have been my fault," kastor admitted, straightening the pin on laurent's jacket affectionately. damen stood on his own, bending to pick up the fateful dagger from where it had fallen to the floor. the group sat where they'd left them, save for nikandros, who was standing with a hand on the edge of the table, hand clutching his chest as if his heart had exploded. he looked at laurent with such fury that laurent knew he had destroyed any burgeoning goodwill he might have fostered with the kyros, but the looks on everyone else's faces varied from shock to delirious amusement, which made up for nikandros' anger.

"that was _treasonous_ ," nikandros bellowed, looking ready to climb over the table and strangle laurent with his bare hands. but damen had his arm over laurent's shoulder, and although his manner was casual and his smile bright, laurent felt protected. not that he couldn't have taken care of himself: damen handed the dagger back to him in a visible gesture in front of his old friend.

"it was suicidal, if anything," he chastised.

"you're mad," the black-haired lord crowed at—well, laurent couldn't tell which one of them he was speaking to, but the madness clearly delighted him.

"i didn't think you'd actually do it," jokaste mused, but she was the only one of the group who looked unsurprised.

laurent hiccuped and smiled, shrugging under the weight of damen's arm. he was hit with a delayed wave of gratefulness that he had not mortally wounded his betrothed, and gave damen an aggressive nuzzle on the shoulder. "nerve is a virtue in vere," he purred. he reached forward to pluck another brandied cherry from the bowl and offered it to damen, who took it with his teeth, cheeks pink beneath even darker tan he'd gotten from days spent training outside.

"isn't he wild? my veretian monster." he said it to the group, but looked only at laurent, looking so pleased with himself that laurent couldn't take it and simply burrowed his face into damen's armpit.

—————

****

**THE** hippodrome was something out of laurent's dreams. in the center of the city, it was a building so large that it might have been out of artesia, glimmering a blinding white like the rest of the structures. damen said it could hold two hundred thousand people, and laurent hadn't believed him until they'd ridden in together. now, after breezing épine inside every morning, laurent had grown slightly more accustomed to the scale, but now that it was being prepared for games, it seemed to expand and grow, full of more bodies and more noise.

he sat on a pretty dapple grey homebred that needed some more work on its flexion, watching the okton riders warm their mounts up, but after twenty strides, he kicked his gelding forward to canter alongside damen's big white stallion.

"sit deeper," he snapped, and damen looked over at him, startled. the stallion pinned his ears and swished his tail.

"he doesn't like you being so close," damen scolded, but laurent rolled his eyes.

"he doesn't like you hitting his back every time he moves. sit deep or get out of the saddle."

after a few strides of listening to laurent's advice, damen grunted. "he's still angry."

"i don't care," laurent shrugged. "he's forward now. he can be angry all he wants. now sit up straight."

the stallion collected himself, and laurent let his own mount open his stride, leaving damen in his wake.

by the time the riders started to scrimmage with spears, laurent was circling the course. he was not the only spectator: there were grooms on the ground to collect stray spears, and to rake the footing between rounds. but there was no oversight the way that there was in the gymnasium, no master athletes barking corrections. but laurent couldn't help himself.

"collect your canter!" he yelled in veretian, circling slowly and watching. "your reins are too long. get him up underneath you, he's strung-out and flat. good. good! feel that? keep that pace. now look three strides earlier, and sit tall, so he knows where you're going and waits until you tell him to go." damen looked more annoyed every time laurent offered unsolicited feedback, but the times that he heeded it, his performance became markedly better. and his horsemanship was not wanting, nor was his skill with the spear: there was just no man that laurent couldn't mold into a better rider, no matter their expertise.

after an hour, laurent trotted by on a bending line. "save him," he called: the white horse was dark with sweat from top to toe, and seemed grateful when damen let his head hang and trotted up alongside laurent.

"you should be a horsemaster," damen admitted. he, too, was dark with sweat and breathing hard. neither of their mounts pinned their ears this time: they happily trot on a long rein together, slender legs in sync.

"i am," laurent shrugged. "as good as one. better than most."

"i thought," damen said slowly, a bit breathless, "we could build a stable at the summer palace. as big as at chastillon, so you have a base here for the horses, too."

laurent purred aloud, and his gelding, grateful for the break, slowed to a walk. damen's stallion didn't wait to be asked. all four were well-worked, although laurent barely sweat. the real heat was in his cheeks, where the sun had been beating down all day. they would most certainly be burnt. he would have ridden in a hat if they didn't distract him so.

"there's no stable there already?"

"oh, for fifty horses, maybe. most of them stay out in the pens. but the scale at chastillon... i've never seen stables like that. you and your great big board."

laurent smiled to himself. "i would like a board."

"i'll build you a thousand," damen promised, and kicked laurent in the shin.

"will you let me tune your horse before the match?"

damen raised a thick brow. "tune him?"

"prep him," laurent shrugged. "ride him in the morning before the games. he'll be a different horse if you let me."

damen reached forward and flipped the horse's white mane back and forth over his neck. they kept them long and let them go wavy in achelos, whereas veretian horses had theirs pulled and trimmed to a neat six inches, and plaited them to always lay flat. "i don't know if i'd be able to ride something after you prepped it to suit you," damen admitted. "mouse here almost has too much blood for me."

laurent positively beamed. " _mouse_?" he was incredulous, and when he saw the bewildered look on damen's face, he burst into laughter. "nothing as big as you should ever sit on something called _mouse_." to be fair, mouse was every inch of eighteen hands. the name was clearly tongue-in-cheek, or—

"he was an unusually small foal," damen snapped. "and what do you sit on? he should be called 'the-future-king-of-achelos'-lap.'"

this time, it was laurent who aimed a kick at damen's shin, which was devoid of the protection of a knee-high leather boot. "this is wulfie." laurent offered the sweet gelding a thorough pat on the neck, the sound of his gloved palm hitting the dappled coat echoing among them as they rode past rows and rows of empty marble seats. "he is three. i think in a couple of years he'll be a good first horse for bautizar. wulfie won't listen to leg and hates the spur, so he's a good one to teach a strong, quiet leg."

he glanced over and caught damen smiling fondly at him, the sweat on his nose catching the light, his long eyelashes clumped with wetness. "what?" laurent breathed, although it was without expectation of an answer.

"wulfie is nice. i liked my idea better."

"well," laurent hummed, taking another opportunity to gaze around at the scale of the structure around them, the red flags hanging limp in the lack of breeze. he could not imagine it full of people. "the next foal to drop, you can name it."

—————

****

**DAWN** had not yet risen when laurent went to the stables in the morning. he was not alone there, of course: before the light of day there was plenty to do, and on a day full of races, the place was bustling. he had mouse tacked up in the same gear that damen would ride him in later, and for good measure, he dug through the smelting bin, pulling out as many bent and used horseshoes as he could, hooking them around his belt until he was sure he weighed a good twenty more pounds. it looked stupid, but if he garnered stares as he mounted and rode out of the yard, it was because the stable hands and grooms knew crazed genius when they saw it, or at least by now had come to trust laurent to his own devices.

he passed the race horses coming in from their breezing, passed the chariots being polished, and when he walked through the gate of the hippodrome, he was met with a sight so spectacular that his breath caught in his throat.

every inch of the rail had been draped with red and gold bunting, all trimmed with laurel branches intertwined with what must have been millions of white roses. the okton targets that had previously been set up in the center of the ring had been removed in favor of new ones, their rich dark varnish glowing in the blue light of the morning. servants and gymnasium masters tended to all of the rings that were set up: the space was big enough so that there was room for a fighting ring and a court for discus and javelin on either side of the massive okton course, with plenty of yardage to spare along the rail for the race lanes. despite how vast it was, it felt infinitely cramped now that the entire space was not empty for riding, and laurent was not the only man there on horseback. but he let mouse wander and sniff and prick his ears at whatever he liked, and was better off riding him straight on the okton course anyhow.

he kept their exercises light: mouse would need his energy for the afternoon, and laurent minded his legs, not wanting to go too rough on an unfamiliar mount. if damen was worried about the creature's blood, laurent worried about damen's: the horse barely went forward under a small spur, and laurent had to pause to switch them to spiked rowels. perhaps those brutish thighs inspired the momentum damen needed, and then laurent was rather distracted by the idea of them for the rest of the ride, a dreamy look on his face while he drilled the poor horse more complexly than it had likely ever been tested. but mouse rose to the occasion, and as soon as he began to get game and spirited, laurent let him have the reins and wander slowly back to the stables.

by the time he was pulling his gloves off in the hall outside of damen's apartments, the sun had risen several feet above the horizon, and he nearly collided with a servant carrying a gilded tray of food and teas. "i'll take that," he insisted in achelon, and the girl looked at him with a horror that he hardly thought was called for. "you're dismissed for the morning. i will attend to the prince," he pressed, balancing the tray on a single hand and dismissing her with a little wave, then beckoning the guards to open the doors for him, which they did only after olivér had stepped forward and started the job for them. laurent handed him a stuffed pastry for his efforts and told him, "wait out here. make some friends! practice your achelon."

damen's chambers were sweet-smelling: the heaving vase of magnolias beside the simple chaise had blossomed between the time that laurent had snuck out and his return, awoken by the sunlight. by contrast, damen had not moved in two hours. had he not been snoring, laurent might have worried for his well-being.

he set the tray down at the end of the bed, pouring two cups of tea and peeling a grapefruit while he watched damen sleep. it was the smell of the citrus, maybe, that roused him: he grumbled, and shifted his face in the cushions.

"my champion," laurent whispered, and damen offered nothing but a grunt of acknowledgement. "your little mouse is prepped, poulticed, and put away. and your prince is returned in time to feed you breakfast."

the mention of food did garner laurent a lift of the head and one dreary brown eye half-open: he swiped a piece of the pink grapefruit through a dish of dream and extended it like one might offer food to a wary dog.

"you smell like horse," he mumbled thickly, and laurent just smiled.

"i like the smell. real men smell like horses." and he watched as damen rolled over slowly, the shape of him shifting dark under the white sheets. it was, laurent thought, as if the entire city had been built for the sheer purpose of making damen's skin look as luminously brown as possible. boots and all, he crawled his way on top of damen, who barely protested and was placated as soon as laurent fed him by hand.

"they do," he agreed, mouth full, his warm hand coming to cup laurent's cheek. "i would have you for breakfast first, before the rest." his face was soft and ruddy with sleep, eyelids fluttering slow like it was taxing him to keep them open.

"will you ride better today if you do?" laurent poked at damen's pride: he had learned that a little goading was oftentimes just what damen was asking for, and as if on cue, his favorite crooked grin appeared.

"i will ride better relaxed," damen insisted sleepily, "and reminded of what i'll get once i win."

there was some delightful heat in laurent's cheeks. the confidence imbued by a productive ride, the pride he felt being entrusted with such a task, the arrogance of knowing he had every right and qualification to be entrusted with it. a good early morning's work, and here he was again, straddling something big and warm and eager to please. it gave him the instinct to slip his hand between them, beneath the sheets, the touch of his fingers contrary to the things he said: "you're so sure you'll get it when you win?"

the depth of damen's groan was vulnerable, and said only that he felt very, very good. "if you feel the way i did after i saw you race," he purred, and laurent had to think a moment to recall what he was talking about. it felt like months ago, a distant memory: damen leaning over the edge of the grandstand in the town center of chastillon, gold laurel glinting in the sunshine, smiling sweetly at laurent as he walked past on an exhausted épine draped in flowers. the best laurent could remember, he had just looked proud.

"already, then?" laurent laughed, which felt at odds with the stroke of his hand. he had never laughed in the middle of such a task. but damen's reaction to his words, or perhaps his touch, or perhaps both, kept him smiling: that handsome dark brow knit as if wounded, a scoff.

"i just thought you were fearless. i remember thinking, 'if i could get him to ride me that way...'"

laurent shut him up with a turn of his wrist, or at least reduced him to wordlessness, and they fucked until they both smelled like horse.

—————

****

**THE** games began before noon: damen insisted it was a waste of time for him to bathe off the sweat and stickiness of their lovemaking, which laurent turned his nose up at. he returned to his own chambers, had a cool bath drawn, and had another of jokaste's elegant creations laid out for him: this time of supple dark blue crepe, the subtle lustre of which complimented the golden threads at its hems. he wore his leather breeches, which were fine enough for formal appearance but would allow him the freedom to... get on a horse at some point? he didn't question his own instincts, just grabbed his only accessory from its velvet-lined box and hot-stepped his way through the palace with jord and olivér in tow.

they swung by the barracks to pick up the rest of the men, or at least those who laurent had invited to sit with him: orlant, aimeric, louis, the usual suspects, all of whom had appropriately polished their pins and trimmed their beards, although orlant had the nerve to give a low wolf-whistle at laurent's bare arms, which earned him a smack upside the head and a venomous " _fuck off_."

it felt different, somehow, to walk the road with his new ring on his finger, stones glittering in the sunlight. he and his men were no longer just tourists in ios, and laurent looked at the fine villas and embassies with a newfound confidence in his step.

achelon soldiers ushered them through a gate carpeted in red at the west end of the hippodrome: it was the only entrance not being positively flooded with ionians, and was heavily guarded. marble steps led up to the massive balcony where, laurent figured, the royal family always sat. it was well-stuffed with comfortable chairs and lounges, tables overflowing with every kind of food and drink imaginable, and was mostly populated already with achelon courtiers. a servant showed them to their seats, and laurent was pleased to see that they sat among friendly faces: the crowd that had witnessed his attempted murder several nights before, dressed in their finest.

kastor looked especially stately, laurent thought, although he was well into downing a goblet of wine. he wore a gold laurel, too, just as damen did, and the sight of it gave laurent a little start, both because he had not expected a bastard to be wearing a crown, and because he remembered the weight of the diadem in his hand. he had been carrying it since the palace, and only now put it on. kastor gestured for him to adjust it a little to the left, which he did, but made a face when kastor bellowed a laugh: "your other left!" damen had mischaracterized his brother. brutish and ruled by his emotions, maybe, but it seemed to laurent all he wanted in life was a good joke.

out of the corner of his eye he spotted another familiar face, and he knelt on his seat to peer back at it, smirking and waving enthusiastically, obnoxious on purpose. "i did not expect you to be a man of the circus," he called to aristokles, who was grouchily batting a servant away from refilling his cup of tea. he regarded laurent miserably, as if the bigger laurent smiled, the more it rained on his parade.

"i am an honored guest here," he grumbled, and knowing it would irritate both aristokles and nikandros, laurent chirped back at him happily:

"honored by who? i didn't invite you!"

once his tutor was thoroughly annoyed, laurent turned back around and sat himself in his seat, jord to his right looking rather breathtaken. and laurent followed his gaze and was breathtaken, too.

the hippodrome, already massive, was teeming with people. it was as if every citizen of ios had shown up to the celebration, bodies moving to fill in every possible space for spectatorship. red rose petals speckled the immaculately groomed floor of the stadium: any hoof prints laurent and mouse had left that dawn were long-since raked over neatly, and laurent could hardly believe this was the same place. the decoration in the morning had been one thing, but ceremony paled in comparison to the sheer _life_ that was able to pack into this space.

his jaw must have been hanging open, because he felt a familiar tap below his chin, although with a wider touch than he was used to. damen sank next to him on the small sofa, fitting just into the space that laurent had left over. as usual, he was radiant, even without a bath: he wore the same brilliantly all-red chiton and cape that he had worn at auguste's birthday, which made laurent feel as if his heart had forgotten that its job was to beat consistently. he still had the pink cheeks and arrogance of man warm with the sheer satisfaction of sex, the audacity of which might have peeved laurent if it weren't for the sweet way damen plucked his hand and kissed his ring. "my love," he murmured, and laurent blushed demurely while damen reached up to brush his fingers over the tiara he wore. "oh," he breathed, clearly pleased, "you should wear a crown all the time."

laurent furrowed his brow searchingly. " _all_ the time?" but damen just looked enthusiastic.

" _all_ the time. _never_ take it off." 

everyone seemed more enthusiastic than laurent when it came to sport. veretians could be bloodthirsty, but achelos was a different kind of society entirely. contactless sports like javelin and foot races seemed to appeal to most in their classical, considered way, ancient showings of perfection of man, but it was boxing and wrestling that lit the crowd aflame. laurent couldn't help but think, leaning forward to better watch the sixth bout of the boxing match, that orlant would have already put an opponent down, and when he leaned over to mention it, orlant gave a big, bright laugh. "i would go all twelve rounds, your highness," he insisted in veretian, "to give them a good show."

everyone seemed enthralled by any shedding of blood, but the men laurent sat surrounded by were fighting men from whom the smell of blood trigged something inside of them that he simply didn't have. the boxing match ended with the loser prostrate in the dirt, struggling to get up and behind held down by a judge, which orlant questioned: "why not let him up? he wants to keep fighting."

"he would die," damen explained over his shoulder, "they don't fight to the death in formal matches here. or, we try not to let them."

"noble," laurent hummed under his breath, and whether he was being sarcastic or not didn't seem to impact the chaste, appreciative kiss that damen pressed to his temple.

when the victor of the match approached the balustrade of the royal box, laurent could see his entire front was covered in blood, his nose having been eviscerated, although a stream that flowed down his throat from his ear seemed to have begun to clot. there was, he noticed, a shift in the air from a different demographic entirely: every woman in their midst seemed to exhale furtively, as if nothing could have possibly been more erotic than a man so heavily bloodied, having a laurel wreath placed on his clean-shaven head by the king. laurent couldn't tell if the man was handsome beyond being, obviously, physically fit. his face was beyond any sort of recognition. but these were the women who loved the fighting men at their sides, and laurent stiffened a little under damen's arm, feeling out of place.

always attentive, damen leaned in and whispered right into the shell of laurent's ear, "i promise i won't look like that tonight." the sheer idea turned laurent's stomach, and he pressed his knuckles to his lips briefly to quell the wave of nausea he felt.

they didn't even mop the blood that the boxer had dribbled on the balustrade, which laurent wasn't particularly surprised by, but none the less it made him curl closer to damen's very intact body, watching the rest of the ceremony with a curious pout. but with damen's fingers tracing faint, pressureless lines over laurent's exposed arm, he was tickled into at least visualizing himself there, in five years perhaps, tawny with a tan in a red chiton, kissing damen's bloodied face with all the pride of a warrior's lover. the scene didn't play well until his mind's eye washed damen's face of injury, however.

when the crowning ceremony for the javelin ended, damen rose, straightening his chiton and going to release his clasp on laurent's hand, although this laurent was uninterested in. "are you going now?" he asked, and damen glanced down at him with a calculated coolness to his gaze, nodding. "i'll come with you. i want to give him a once-over when you get on."

damen gestured briefly to his father to announce his quiet departure, and theomedes went to wave, then frowned as laurent stood. "your groom?" the king posited, and as he often did, he looked at laurent with amusement, as if his sheer existence was a joke. he was getting used to it at this point.

but damen just nodded, unfazed, replying with a chipper "indeed!" while laurent stilled jord's rise with his hand.

"stay and enjoy yourself," he whispered to his captain.

jord, with a furtive glance at aimeric, shook his head. "i insist." and laurent didn't argue with him on the point. the city was loud and thronging, and once damen was mounted and in the arena, laurent would be as auguste had forbidden him: unguarded in ios.

the walk down to the stables in the basement of the hippodrome was empty, given that it was exclusively for the use of the royal family and their guests, but even if it hadn't been, laurent would have held damen's hand, their arms twined together. the feeling in his chest was horribly, irritatingly familiar: the same he'd gotten when damen and auguste had taken up arms against each other in arles.

"if you die—" he began impotently: damen cut him off with a laugh.

"i'm not going to die."

but laurent was forceful. " _if_ you die," he repeated, "i will be very sad."

"i'm not going to die," damen said again, stubborn in the face of laurent's own willfulness. "i've never even been injured in the okton."

"famous last words," said jord behind them, and laurent saw he and damen share a rueful something that bordered between smile of kinship and grimace.

the stables were busy when they walked in: more chaotic than laurent liked them to be on the day of a race. in vere, grooms were like medics on important days. in achelos, it seemed like mild bedlam was the preferred operating procedure. it meant that he was immediately self-assigned the role of shooing away three achelon grooms from mouse's pristine white sides: their disorganization was making him paw and prance, and laurent's hand on his neck soothed the nervous energy out of him in a few moments.

he checked everything twice. a hard tug to every strap, a finger touching every buckle and keeper. he ordered two new nosebands be brought to him and, tossing one aside, replaced the one on mouse's bridle handily before slipping it on the gelding's head, unceremoniously wiping his frothy, spitty hand on his breeches once he'd slipped the bit into mouse's mouth. he knew he'd worn them for a reason.

that damen, in all his breadth, didn't need a leg up was a marvel to laurent, who could easily toss himself over a horse's back by accident, but he still took mouse by the reins, warily standing by his head like a dutiful groom, and it was he who led the pair through the small yard to the covered ring where the other men were warming up their mounts.

"he's going to be waiting for you to show him where you're going," he murmured, less keen to be so flagrantly coaching damen here than he had been in previous hacks. "you don't need to allow for time for him to listen and turn. look early with your legs."

he heard, from above, damen's chuckle, and when he looked up, that reliable expression of adoration gazed back down at him, damen's head crowned by a halo of dark curls. laurent reached up, feeling the weight of his own crown on his head, and damen plucked the golden laurel off the top of his own, handing it down to his betrothed. "will you crown me with the fresh one when i win?" damen asked, gathering the reins and sitting straighter in the saddle as a horse, warming up, whizzed past them at a fractious canter.

"i want to watch you from the gate," he said impertinently, but damen, in all his gentleness, corrected him.

"go watch with my father. please. he's not afraid for me, and he'll..."

laurent wrinkled his nose. "think that i think you're weak?"

damen, pragmatic and unbothered by it, nodded. " _i_ may need you to look after me, but let's not let him think so."

he was put into his place by the request, and so laurent gave damen's thigh a pinch, cinched his girth up once more, and when all had been set, he grasped damen's bare calf with both hands and pressed a chaste, lingering kiss to the divot on the outside of his knee. "be safe," he implored, gazing up. "i love you."

laurent's job, then, was resolution. jord stayed close by his side to escort him back up to the royal box, and as they took their seats once more, laurent began his act. sitting up straight but with a decided splay to his legs that said he was still lounging whilst now paying attention in a more rapt way than he had been during the other sports, his face trained into a neutral curiosity. it was the utmost silliness, he thought, to have to sit here and pretend, as the ring was raked and the okton riders galloped in, that he didn't care whether damen lived or died when of course everyone knew that it would be a devestation beyond imagination, not just for laurent but for the whole of achelos. "why important men hunger to risk their lives for silly sport, i'll never understand," he muttered into jord's ear, but if his captain had sympathy for him, it was well-masked by the rueful grin he wore. perhaps laurent, then, was the only one in attendance who could not separate the spectacle from the man performing it.

no one died—one man broke a leg in a rather foul and bloody way, and laurent partially registered kastor telling him that a man wounded thus in an okton would be supported financially for the rest of his life by the crown, which he thought perhaps would make up for the fact that the man would never ride again, not with his shinbone sticking out of his thigh. another horse slipped, although she righted herself and her rider, thrown from her back, rolled out of the way of oncoming hooves just quickly enough so that both were unharmed.

damen was good, yes. but as laurent, beaming, whispered to him as he settled the laurel on his sweat-soaked curls, "mouse is the true champion here."

"to mouse, then," damen crowed as jord handed him a goblet of wine. "and his wonderful groom."

—————

****

**EVERYTHING** ended up packed once more.

there had been discussions on if anything should just be left, but in the end, there was nothing he could easily part with for a whole season. but there was no trunk for damen, no state room prepared for him on the ship.

how it had only been two months since that hot day in chastillon, laurent couldn't fathom. the leaves of the northern forest had begun to turn, auguste had written in his last letter, autumn in full swing in arles. but in the gardens in ios, it was still balmy with the smell of citrus and salt in the air, an eternal summer. it was where they hid on their last morning together, making love in the grass beneath a copse of lemon trees, hidden by ferns and irises. while it was usually damen's chest, obscene in its broadness, that served as laurent's pillow, in this instance their roles were reversed and it was damen whose ear and soft curls rested atop laurent's heart.

"i want you inside that library at all times." the words were just for the two of them, not loud enough for the ferns nor the lemons, and damen spoke in achelon as he did when he was tired and sated and half-undressed.

"to die of heatstroke?"

"so that no one so much as looks at you while i'm not there."

laurent decided he liked very much the feeling of cool sweat at the root of damen's hair, nails meandering against his scalp with no acute destination in mind. "everyone there has already _seen_ me," he chastised, no grit whatsoever to his words. "and seen me with you. i was in love with you there, too, you know."

damen hummed, easily contented. "feels like a hundred years ago."

"if two weeks feels like a hundred years, three months is going to be eternity for you." there was a definite sadness to laurent's voice, one he didn't know how to veil, especially in present company. putting on a confident, passive face in front of theomedes had been easier, but in the gardens alone there was vast room for his big emotions, and he felt his throat begin to strangle itself with grief. damen, however, seemed to have a plan.

"i'm going to sail up there in a month. you can stay put, you'll never have to get on a ship. but i'll live on one if it means seeing you before our wedding."

it was the way laurent inhaled that gave him away—he knew it the moment he took the breath, shaky and shallow, and knew damen could feel every tic in it from where he lay just atop laurent's lungs. "love is such a tricky thing," laurent sighed, hating how his voice betrayed his emotion even further.

————— **AUGUSTE** —————  
TWELVE.

**HENNIKE'S** second pregnancy was a late one, unexpected but not unwelcome. she had been almost a child when auguste was born, he knew, not even twenty-one. it was rare for women to carry a child past thirty, and even more rare for the pregnancy to be without complications. if anyone had tried to hide this reality from auguste, they'd done a poor job. there was a real, tangible fear for his mother's life in the air for nine months. even a child with a simple emotional range could feel that.

the baby came early in the morning and early in the pregnancy, the midwife said, about three weeks and around four bells. a healthy boy. his nurse had woken him from where he'd fallen asleep fitfully on top of his bed, still fully-clothed, banished from his parents' bedroom for the delivery but able to hear every scream of misery from his mother's lungs. when it was time to go inside and meet him, auguste planted his feet into the carpet. there was no way that his mother had survived such pain. she would be dead, gone, replaced with a screaming infant. the harder his nurse tugged at his hand, the more ferocious he became, snarling and gnashing his teeth, tears starting to dribble down his cheeks.

it was his father who stopped the commotion, as he always could and often did. he slipped through the closed bedroom doors and shut them immediately behind himself. tall as a tree and just as ruggedly handsome, auguste often thought it was unfair that he didn't look more like his father. but now he looked weary, little bruises beneath his eyes when he crouched down in front of auguste, and he was dressed informally, bare-footed with his shirt unlaced at the throat. to auguste's horror, there were smears of pink and red blood on it, and he burst into full-blown sobs at the sight.

" _auguste_ ," his father reprimanded tenderly, and in an easy instant picked his son up by the armpits, moving to hold him on his hip. "everything's alright. no crying—this is a happy day. you have a little brother now."

auguste hiccupped and heaved, burying his wet face into his father's neck. "but _mother_ ," he screamed, muffled, his poor little heart ripped in two by the thought. if he'd been lucid at all, he would have seen his father's puzzled look and felt how mechanical the pat on his back was, the nurse and the king both shrugging at each other, unsure what the boy could be in such hysterics about.

"mother is fine," aleron said, bewildered, and cradling his son to his chest with one hand, he opened the door to the bedchamber with the other. "mother?" he called, "are you fine?"

auguste might as well have been dropped from a balcony with the way his heart swooped at the sound of her voice. "i am hungry," he heard her say petulantly, with that familiar smile in her voice. she was hoarse, but she was there, and aleron was charged with the difficult task of holding a twelve-year-old boy still in his arms when auguste began to squirm wildly to be let down.

"your mother has fought harder than any soldier ever has," his father said haltingly through gritted teeth, arms flexing to keep auguste's writhing quiet. "you must be gentle now. she and your brother are exhausted."

when auguste paused for a moment and craned his neck to see his mother in his parents' bed, there was something new to her. well, several things: her face was pallid, grey in some places and hot pink in others, and her eyes were heavy and ringed in shadows, her spun gold hair tied up in a blue ribbon wet with sweat. but she was wearing the most peaceful smile he'd ever seen grace her beautiful face, and she was holding a very prettily swaddled bundle of red potatoes. or a baby. auguste's eyes went wide and suspicious, nose crinkling at the bridge as he craned and peered.

"if you can be _very_ gentle and still," his father said, holding him fast, "you can lay with them and meet your brother. can you be _very_ gentle and still, auguste?"

in an attempt to be _very_ gentle and still, he did not nod, simply blinked at his father and didn't move a muscle. and he stayed as unmoving as his father deposited him onto the bed beside his mother. she smelled tangy and herbaceous, the smell of sweat and medicine, and she canted the bundle in her arms so that auguste could see inside.

his little brother was ugly, and it made him sad instantly. "he will be cursed to look like this forever?" he whispered hastily, looking from his mother to his father in panic. this time he saw it, the exchange of bewildered, cocked eyebrows, between his parents. and his mother huffed a little laugh.

"auguste, he is a baby," she breathed, shaking her head. "you have seen babies grow up. do you see how light his lashes are? i think he will look just like you."

snuggling down against her shoulder, he reconsidered this notion. "did i look like this when i was a baby?"

"you were much fatter," his father said, and auguste felt the featherbed sink as his father sat beside him. "he may always be a little smaller, but he was brave to come into the world early. he'll be a fearless boy like you."

auguste, tentatively, extended his index finger, comparing it to his brother's, whose tiny fingernail was so minuscule auguste thought it must have been a dream. hesitantly, a little afraid to be scolded for it, he gave the nail a gentle tap, and he _was_ scolded, but not by either of his parents: it was his little brother who scratched his finger, grabbed it, and immediately bit it with his gummy little mouth. auguste squealed, the baby squealed, the latter bubbling into a puddle of laughter that spread, slowly, from baby to father to mother to auguste.

"fearless little laurent," his father said, and auguste considered the beaming, mischievous baby.

"hello, laurent. please do not bite my finger again."

—————  
THIRTY-THREE.

**MARLAS** was not different than he remembered. if he had been expecting something different, though, he thought he had been a fool. why would it have been? what would have changed? the citadel's smooth walls, the rolling slope of the meadows, the hills that held a view of the sea between them? all of the things that made it lovely? and it was lovely, beautiful even in the winter, when the grasses were tawny instead of rich green and when the trees were dormant, some bare of leaves and some yellow and the evergreen cypress reminding everyone that the soil was still very much alive this far south. the ground didn't freeze, or only rarely, so the horses could still make easy use of the meadows, and the men, then, too.

every falter was impressed upon his memory, more easily recalled than most. the time laurent had extracted himself shakily from a chaise in the west lounge, looking green at having had his hand kissed by a vaskian lord. the time he'd made the foolish attempt to send laurent, eighteen and glowing with the peachy beauty of youth, all the way to patras: but he remembered, too, the kindness torvald had exuded, how deferential and patient he had seemed to be. when he'd asked laurent whether he thought the patran prince was handsome, he'd looked placid, like the idea didn't repel him—and then he'd seen the pink high on his brother's cheeks and thought, _perhaps this might be it_. but laurent had come back from patras drowning in courtship gifts and said, simply, that it had been a nice visit, albeit not very productive in terms of statecraft. _they do all their discussing in little gondolas on the blue canals,_ he'd sniffed, and auguste had realized even the adoration of the prince of patras had gone unnoticed. laurent, he'd finally figured out then, didn't know a true lover, one that didn't kiss without asking permission or treat a heart like a precious flower. and torvald had not been the right one to show him. he'd lacked the language, maybe.

he remembered the only time he'd seen his uncle touch his brother in the time between _knowing_ and when he'd had the monster incapacitated. he'd walked into breakfast in the royal courtyard a few moments late, and saw their uncle sitting beside laurent, wiping cream from the boy's bottom lip. in any other circumstance, it might have been an affable, familial gesture. in this circumstance, with the way laurent went rigid and grey, it was menacing, a flagrant violation of the sanctity of a family table.

he remembered laurent, shaking on the edge of his bed, fist closed around something: when he'd gingerly pried those vicelike fingers open, there was blood smeared on his palm, two white teeth clutched so hard they'd left purple imprints against his life line. "not yours?" he'd breathed, and laurent had shaken his head. "i—it happens when someone kisses me." he cried and was sullen for days, and auguste remembered watching him, a shadow of himself.

so much had gone unsaid. his own decision: he would never tell laurent that he knew the truth. one less person to know that secret, the one he knew embroiled laurent in shame. jord could be, would be his only conscious ally. it had been hard to let the captain of his brother's guard have that power: he'd had to open himself up to allowing someone else to be laurent's sole protector. that was his penance for not having protected him in the first place.

every moment and memory had been a different boy, feeling fear or uncertainty in a thousand different ways. the strength he had shown as a child, the naïvety and tenderness as a young man. it culminated in this, he thought, gazing out through a crenellation at the top tower. from this vantage, he could see the sunset for miles, the sea illuminated in black silver, the golden hills alight. and, fifty feet below him, enjoying the same view from the master rampart of the fort, two newlyweds kissing with blooming vivacity, not a loose tooth in sight.

————— **BAUTIZAR** —————  
THIRTEEN.

**HIGH** artesian was easy enough, but it was the low stuff that he always found the most difficult. the words didn't dissect as easily as they did in formal documents, the puzzle harder to unravel. the warmth in marlas in summer didn't help, although even when it was hotter than arles, the sea breeze made it all a little more tolerable. if the day was nice, they would read outside, and when it was too hot or sunny, they would retreat into the library, which had been built inside the old armory and stayed cool, partly subterranean and made of marble.

anaïs rarely joined them, as she was very much their mother's daughter and preferred to follow her around all day pretending to be a queen. he was fine with that. his uncle had high expectations for him but was, on the whole, a more pleasant teacher than his tutors in arles, and on the days where his uncle's husband, the achelon king, joined them, he was always in even brighter spirits and less likely to double-check any of bautizar's work, distracted by reading to his lover or gossiping about horseflesh. it was rare that his father or damianos would grace them with their presence, as they were generally rather busy ruling nations, but sometimes in the hour before dinner, the kings would find the two blondes sitting in the garden, conjugating verbs or inventing crude sonnets to one another. the latter activity they always joined in.


End file.
